The Na'gseihr Clan
by Manuuk7
Summary: Enterprise is diverted to help a Vulcan colony under attack. Except it took five years for the distress call to be heard. What happened to the colony's children?
1. The Distress Call

_Just borrowing Star Trek characters for a little while. Will put them back in place as soon as I'm done._

"Incoming communication from Starfleet, Captain… for you." Archer couldn't help the sense of excitement that ran through him at the announcement. Finally something to relieve the boredom of mapping out a space quadrant with very few planets and very rudimentary Vulcan space maps. Archer's guess was that the Vulcans had found the whole endeavor to be stupefyingly dull and decamped as quickly as they could for better horizons. If the Vulcans found it dull, this particular human could be excused to find it unbearably, mind-numbingly, boring. He got up, glad for the opportunity to stretch his legs "Patch it to my ready room. T'Pol, you have the con." The Vulcan didn't even bother to look up from the science scanner she was staring into. Archer agreed silently. Their journey so far had been so uneventful that even a command responsibility was not worth changing stations.

Admiral Gardner's face materialized on the screen. "Admiral"

"Captain Archer," Gardner nodded back a greeting, then went straight to the point "we have received a communique from Vulcan asking for Starfleet's help." Archer made a face and Gardner frowned at him, but didn't comment. He leaned into the videocom "Apparently, there is a Vulcan colony on Tau Ceti Sector V, not far from your quadrant of space. The Vulcan High Council just received a distress call from the colony that they are under attack. The nearest Vulcan starship is two months away, but Enterprise can be there much sooner than that. They have asked for you to divert to the planet and help in any way you can." Gardner paused "Here's the catch, Captain. The message from the colony got caught in the gravitational pull of a newly developing black hole, which slowed its transmission. Appreciably." He stared intently at Archer "The distress call was sent over five years ago." Gardner pushed off from the videocom, fingers crossed in front of him on the desk. "There is no telling what you will find on the planet, so this may end up being nothing more than a post-mortem survey. I am attaching the communication from the colonists. Good luck, Jonathan." With that, he signed off.

xx

The attention of all personnel on the bridge was riveted on the main screen, where a Vulcan male talked straight into the camera, the only indication of emotional stress his clipped enunciation, coming across even through the universal translator. "This is Leader S'erhik of Colony Na'gseihr of Planet Minshara 405 of Tau Ceti Sector V. We are under attack. I repeat, we are under attack." The screen shook as the sound of bombs hitting close-by could be heard. "We do not know the identity of our assailants but the pattern of attack indicates their intent is to eradicate the outpost. If you receive this communication, please forward it in its integrity to Vulcan. Let it be known that the feathers of the sunbird shine green when the sun rises. I repeat, the feathers of the sunbird shine green when the sun rises." The man looked up from the camera as a Vulcan woman approached behind him, lurching to keep her balance as the bombardment intensified. The man turned to her and she splayed her fingers on the side of his face. He returned the gesture. There was no mistaking the picture of a loving couple saying good-bye. A flash of indescribable brilliance bathed the screen and the transmission went dark. Hoshi swallowed hard, conscious that Travis next to her was fixedly looking down at his station. Nobody spoke for several long seconds.

Archer turned to T'Pol "Any idea what that last part meant?" She didn't reply, her unfocused stare the only sign that she was processing through everything she knew for an answer. Then she blinked and looked at Archer "The children" she said hesitantly.

"The children…?"

"The children are still alive." T'Pol's tone was now definite. All activity on the bridge stopped. Everyone was looking at her. T'Pol went on "The feathers of the sunbird is the title of an ancient Vulcan poem from pre-Surak times, about a couple who is promised by the deities that they will have more children than a sunbird has feathers. Due to atmospheric and biochemical peculiarities a sunbird's feathers cannot be seen when the sun rises, and therefore the attackers could not see the children. Green is the color of blood, which is a synonym for life."

Archer nodded. That would make sense to a Vulcan. "They put it in code in case the communication got intercepted" he hazarded.

T'Pol nodded. "Which is why the logical deduction are that the children were still alive, or they would not have needed to code the message."

"That was five years ago…" Archer let his voice trail off. There was no need to voice what everybody already know. The odds of finding the children alive were not in their favor, unless "What where the ages of the children in the colony's manifest?" He had handed T'Pol the roster of all the colonists on the planet, with the usual overabundance of detail to be expected from Vulcan authorities, a fact of which he was, at the current instant, extremely glad. The next comment from T'Pol deflated his belief in the perfection of Vulcan bureaucracy. "I would expect not all the children were on the roster. The colonists were on the planet for seventy years, there would have been children born almost every year. Vulcan records would have been updated over time, but one must expect a temporal lag before communications could reach Vulcan."

"How current is the list we have?" Archer asked.

"The last update to the list was eight years ago, three years before the attack. One would expect there had been additional births in the meantime." Archer raised an eyebrow meaningfully at T'Pol. Three year lag? It certainly seemed like the colonists were not as strict record keepers as one would expect of Vulcans. "But don't they have to register the DNA of all Vulcan children with Vulcan?" he asked, based on their experience with the bombing of the Terran embassy. "That is true of all children born on Vulcan" replied T'Pol, "but it is not always practical or feasible for Vulcan children born on other worlds or colonies to be registered at birth. The births are usually kept in local records and updates to the DNA database are made when the children return to Vulcan for their kahs-wan or at other times." Archer did not have a mental picture of the Kahs-Wan from when he shared Surak's katra, the ritual had evolved post-awakening as a way to preserve survival – and warring – skills, but he knew it was both compulsory and perilous. Fairly far removed from the 'participation-prize' activities preferred by many human parents. He absent-mindedly wondered whether there was the equivalent of Vulcan baby boomers, who were born and died offworld, and made a note to ask Travis. But first, they had duties to attend.

"T'Pol, lay out the shortest course to the planet. Travis, let's get there as fast as you can. Trip, do you think you can give us warp five for a good long while?"

"Aye, Captain" "I'll give you everything I have" simultaneously answered Archer's requests. There was no similar utterance from the science officer. It was illogical to confirm a direct order since the chain of command made it an obligation to obey.

xx

"What are we looking at?" Archer asked T'Pol. The two of them were alone in his ready room, where he had asked for a report on the children of Colony Na'gseihr. She looked at him nonplussed, then at the data padd in her hand and Archer corrected automatically "How many children can we expect to find?"

"There were fifty-three children at last count, approximately two to three years before the attack," she handed him the padd. "Since the colonists were almost all of child-bearing age, the expected birth rate would be of seven new births per year, on average. Accounting for the normal ageing out of the oldest children, there would have been an estimated fifty-eight children at the time of the attack. Even if all of them survived the attack, not all of them would have survived the severing of the parental bonds."

Archer looked at her questioningly "The severing of the parental bonds?" _did Vulcans ever do anything simply_?

T'Pol explained "The death rate for children under the age of one who suffer a severing of the parental bond is 92.3%. For those below the age of two, the death rate is approximately 68.2%, and for those aged two to four years old it is about 40.8%. There were nine children age two to four years old in the roster. Extrapolating for the severing of parental bonds and new births until the attack, there should be a total of forty-two children remaining on the planet."

Archer frowned "That's not very many."

"That is forty-two more than zero."

x x x

"There do not seem to be any bio-signs on the planet." T'Pol announcement resonated across the bridge. Archer tensed up as he felt the wave of disappointment ripple across the bridge. He hadn't fully realized how the slim hope they had that the children would still be alive, five years after their outpost was destroyed, had been shoring up the crew over the long past five weeks. "Due to the volcanoes there is a dampening field over the entire hemisphere," T'Pol hurried to add as the feeling of disappointment circled around the bridge back to her emotional shields. She looked up from her scanner "I am unable to ascertain whether there are any bio-signs on the planet, either people or animals." Archer could have sworn he almost heard a twinge of frustration.

The entire bridge crew stared at the planet on the screen. Planet Minshara 405 of Tau Ceti Sector 5. It seemed Vulcans were intensely pragmatic in naming their planets. Archer was pretty certain the Vulcans would never have referred to Planet Minshara 405 other than by its full name, possibly dropping the Tau Ceti Sector 5 reference on occasion, but humans abhorred spending much of their relatively short life span pronouncing complicated names, and the crew had quickly proceeded to rename the planet PM405. As it rotated slowly on the screen, Archer mentally went over all the information they had spent the past five weeks learning about PM405 and the colonists. A Minshara-class planet, with a fairly lush environment, or at least temperatures and humidity close enough to a temperate zone and able to sustain a fairly lush environment, and a half-ring of volcanoes which were a distinct geological rarity of some kind and the reason why a colony of Vulcan scientists had proceeded to settle on PM405 and learn more about the phenomenon. Colony Na'gseihr was formed seventy-five years ago. Plans had been that the colony would remain in place for 250 years, or longer if it turned out that the volcanoes phenomenon was even more interesting than thought to the planet Vulcan, itself loaded with volcanoes. Some of the scientists had gone with their entire family, the rest were mostly couples. Every ten years, a Vulcan ship left Vulcan to bring equipment and supplies, pick up returning passengers, and bring additional staff and researchers. Otherwise the colonists were on their own. The direct trip on a transport from Vulcan took eighteen to thirty months, depending on other stops along the way. The last transport had left the colony soon after the roster was updated. The youngest child on the roster would now be ten years old, the oldest twenty-seven years old, on the cusp of teenage years by Vulcan standards. The unknown was how many children there were that were not born at the time of the colony roster. And what happened to them? How could any child that young have survived at that age without any adults, and for five years? Vulcan or otherwise.

Archer shook himself back to the duty at hand. Whatever answers were to be found, they were not going to find them sitting on the bridge.

He entered the command center right on the heels of Reed for the pre-landing briefing. The other senior officers and a team of MACOs were already loosely gathered around the center console. Archer launched directly into the meeting "The Starfleet officers on the initial away team will be myself, Commander T'Pol, Commander Tucker, and Lieutenant Reed. I have asked Lieutenant Reed to cover tactical operations for the landing party. We believe that a group of children may remain on the surface, Commander T'Pol will cover that last."

Reed spoke first. "All we know at this point is that the colony was attacked, and we believe, destroyed. There have been no responses to our communications and assumptions are that the outpost was entirely destroyed. But at this point we do not know if hostiles remain on the planet or if they booby-trapped the place or whether there are any survivors. The first away team is going to be limited to eight, four officers and four MACOs. We will transport to the surface in two shuttlepods, and land approximately 1.5 miles from the settlement. Once we reach the settlement, we will fan out in teams of two, one Starfleet and one MACO. Our initial survey will be limited to securing the perimeter." Reed glanced over the assembly. "If we find that there are no remaining risks, additional teams will be transported to the surface to look for the children. Commander?"

T'Pol's voice was level as always. "Based on the latest roster from the planet, there were fifty-eight juveniles approximately two point five years before the outpost was attacked. Based on expected rates of reproduction and accounting for premature deaths by reason of the attack, there should be roughly forty-two children remaining."

"You have your orders." Archer ended the meeting, looking over the room and reading the same thought in Malcolm's and the MACOs' and on Tucker's face. How difficult could it be to locate 42 children?

xx

If it had not been for the obvious signs of destruction, the outpost would have been a haven of harmony, Reed thought, looking at the how the ruins were organized in intersecting circles around open plazas. He did not have much of an appreciation for grace and beauty unless it was a knock-me-over-the-head kind of beauty, like T'Pol's, but even his untrained eye could recognize the harmony pervading the abandoned settlement. He had a brief reminiscence of a concept long ago learned and forgotten, something about a golden ratio. He would not be surprised to find that Vulcans built everything according to some super harmonious kind of mathematical formula.

Bringing himself back to the reality of the destroyed dwellings, the scorch marks on anything still standing, and the general air of catastrophic disarray, with encroaching vegetation hard at work at reclaiming the settlement and returning it to land, he motioned for the away teams to fan out in twos as planned, each pair consisting of a MACO and an officer, each with its own reconnaissance map overlaid on the outpost blueprint.

It only took a couple of hours before the teams regrouped inside the main building, identified on the settlement plans as the main research center and still partially standing, though nothing remained of any floors over the first floor other than half-broken columnar supports. Archer had an inkling that the higher floors were where the Vulcan couple had sent the distress signal from. Communication equipment would have been elevated to minimize the geomagnetic disruption from the volcanoes. As they entered the building, the search teams reported back to Reed that there were no signs of life or attackers or any of the 550 plus colonists that had last been listed on the roster. Archer's breath caught in his throat. This was the second colony he had seen entirely destroyed, and as far as he was concerned that was two too many. The fact that he did not have to deal with the possibility that he had destroyed the colony through his own actions, as for Paraagan II, was small consolation. He did not want to have to go again through page after page of faces and biographies of interesting people that he could have easily related to if they had met on a space station somewhere in the area, just so he could prepare a memorial. All the potential wasted, the brilliance that would never be. Believing that the children were still alive had been his guiding hope and he had refused to read anything about them in the roster, he would have plenty of time to learn about them when he met them. Especially now that half or more of them were adults, at least in human years.

Reed walked over to Archer, who shook his head to forestall hearing what he already knew. The colony was destroyed, the sensors were not working, and there were no traces of either the colonists or their children. "Let's check the science center out. Trip, T'Pol, see if anything is left upstairs." Archer and Reed led the way, carefully stepping over fallen steel beams into a very dusty hallway. Archer motioned with his phase pistol and two of the MACOs fell in step behind Reed and him, two more followed Trip and T'Pol. They soon came to a couple of large stone doors, one broken, the other half-hanging from its brackets. The top beam was on the floor behind them. Reed stepped over, closely followed by Archer. The room was a scientific command center of some kind, full of highly specialized, though broken and dusty, equipment. Reed saw something on the floor, bent to scan it. "Blood." He looked up at Archer. "Vulcan." Reed had a vague sense of _déjà_ _vu_ , frowned until recognition hit him. The Selaya. That was almost the same thing he had said when he first noticed blood on one of the bulkheads of the Selaya. Reed made a fervent plea that this would not end up the same way, nervously looking over his shoulder in case Vulcan zombies started jumping out of the woodworks.

They retraced their steps, as there were no other places left on that side of the building. Trip, T'Pol and the other MACOs were just coming down the stairs as they walked by. Trip shook his head. "Nothing to see upstairs. The roof was blown open and everything there is either ruined or destroyed."

"No signs of life?" Archer asked.

"No signs of life, no bodies, nothing."

Archer turned to T'Pol "Anything else we could try doing? Perhaps there are special features of Vulcan buildings, a little like tornado cellars in some states, or air raid shelters. Anything that would have protected people from an attack. Or signs that they left and relocated somewhere else, a message encoded in the remaining ruins…"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "It may be worthwhile to go over the settlement again. Any shelters would have been created underground. I would advise everyone to look down at their feet for any signs of unevenness in the ground, or differences in the color of the substrate. "

Trip spoke up "if they did build shelters, here or somewhere else, plans and materials would be in the colony's database. If we could transport a power cell down, I could try and bring the computers online, see if there is anything we can restore."

Archer nodded. "Good idea, Trip. Get a couple of guys from Engineering to come down help you. The MACOs will help clear out a path to the computer room." He turned to the rest of the away team. "Since there are no life forms around, let's spread out and cover more ground. Using the science center as the center, I'll cover the northeast quadrant. T'Pol, you cover northwest. Reed, take the southwest, and McKenzie southeast. Meet up at the command center in two hours at the latest, by 1615."

xx

T'Pol took a step between the buildings, eyes down, looking for any sign of additional construction or irregularity in the ground cover, scanner at the ready on the outside chance there would be irregularities in the dampening field and she could actually scan something else than white noise. Suddenly her scanner came to life. She stopped in her tracks, looking at the readings. She sensed a movement just out her peripheral vision, looked up, but there was nothing to be seen. Focusing on the scanner, she started towards where the movement seemed to have been. There was nothing there, other than the ruins of houses empty of occupants, doors and roofs open to the skies in silent screams of anguish, and the rapidly encroaching tropical vegetation. Again she caught a movement from the corner of her eye. Her scanner flashed that yes, there was something there. Possibly a biosign. T'Pol took another step towards the forest, and her world exploded in a green haze of pain that bled into darkness.

xx

Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Archer felt a headache building out of frustration. He had arrived back at the science center, just short of the two hour limit, to find that Trip had been able to power up the computer system but that the main drive had been wiped clean or corrupted by time and the atmosphere, they didn't quite know which yet. The others were already there, as empty-handed as he was. All that was left to do was collect T'Pol and go back to the Enterprise. Archer's thoughts were on contacting Starfleet and then Vulcan, let them digest the news and decide on what the next steps would be. While they were doing that, Enterprise would revert to a being a vessel of exploration, and they would find every damn last thing there was to discover about this planet and the volcanoes, so that the colony's demise would not have been in vain. _Now, where was T'Pol?!_

Trip looked up from where he was fine-tuning the electrical array feeding into the computers, frowning. He waited for a few moments, then went back to his task. He had had a very brief and sharp headache, but it went away. T'Pol and he had known that the dampening field would play havoc with their ability to sense each other more than at a subliminal level. In these conditions he had to believe that the pain must be coming from a budding headache and not from her. He could still sense their bond in the back of his mind, and decided that he was unworried.

That was precisely the moment when Archer walked over to where he was "Have you heard from T'Pol?"

"No, Captain. I thought she was with you."

"We were all supposed to meet back here fifteen minutes ago." Archer frowned. "It's not like her to be late."

Trip got up. Now he was worried. "I don't know, Captain." He frowned, remembering the stab of pain he had felt "but I have a bad feeling about this."

Archer eyed him for a couple of seconds, turned on his heel. "McKenzie, Reed, we need to find T'Pol. Trip come with me. Everybody stay in pairs."

xx

' _stupid, stupid, stupid_.' Trip's mind rhythmed each step he took. By now Jonathan should have known better than to allow the members of the away team to go explore on their own, without backup. What was it that made him constitutionally unable to learn? By the time nightfall interrupted their search, he had a bad headache and all they had to show for their efforts was... nothing. Especially not a certain Vulcan science officer that he desperately needed to get back. Back on the Enterprise. He was worried.

TBC


	2. The Cave

_All Vulcan terms are from the Vulcan Language Dictionary. Some characters are borrowed from Paramount and will be returned._

T'Pol woke to an intense pain in her head. Her hand went out reflexively to her head but she couldn't complete the movement and she realized that her hands were tied behind her back. Her feet also were tied together, the bonds tight enough to be almost painful. She kept her eyes closed, feigning unconsciousness while she tried to figure out her surroundings.

A sharp pain in her flank made her start up and flinch away. "We know you are awake." The voice was male, and it was talking in Vulcan.

At that T'Pol opened her eyes, blinking at the throbbing in her head. Her vision was partly obstructed. After a while, the glare receded and she was able to take in her surroundings. She was in a large grotto, with walls of black stone that were too sleek to be have been entirely nature-made. The floor was covered with a white sandy granulate. The vertical plane of the walls was interrupted by a horizontal crack that ran the entire length of the grotto, wide enough in places to allow for a fully grown person to stand. The inside of the crack was obscured by shadows from the overhang and one could not tell how far the crack extended or even if there were people actually occupying the ledge. Turning her gaze to the person who talked, she saw a Vulcan male with a lance in his hand, eyeing at her suspiciously. He was in all evidence a youngster, between twenty and thirty years old, on the cusp of teenage years. His long hair was a shaggy mane in which leaves, shells and other natural decorations were woven at regular intervals. The lance was rough-hewn from what must have been a fallen branch, though the sharp pain in her flank matched the shaped arrowhead at its top. His arms were bare but he was otherwise fully clothed in some kind of tunic and leggings that seemed to be made of animal skin. She raised an eyebrow, then using her shoulder and elbow, lifted herself to a sitting position. She blinked rapidly a few times trying to block the intense dizziness that accompanied the motion. Once again, her hand went reflexively to her head, but was checked by the restraints. After a while she was able to block the pain to a degree.

The two of them silently stared at each other. "Who are you?" she asked in Vulcan.

The young male didn't reply. He looked up at the ledge and a second young male leapt down onto the sandy ground. He too was between twenty and thirty years old. He was dressed in a tunic and pants that had seen better days, his hair was chopped off at his shoulders and he was holding a lirpa in his left hand. He stepped over and faced T'Pol "You are not to ask who we are. You are to tell us who you are."

"I am T'Pol of Vulcan. I came on the starship Enterprise. We received the distress call that Leader S'Erhik sent five years ago. We came to help."

"How do we know you are who you say you are?" a feminine voice rang from above. T'Pol raised her head, trying to peer into the shadows of the ledge, which triggered waves of pain and nausea. She leveled her gaze to the men in front of her and saw the second guard walk to the wall, raise his hand to the ledge, and a lithe figure step down over his shoulder, using him as a ladder. She wore the tunic of an adult woman though she looked about twenty. Like the guard with the lirpa, her clothing was beyond threadbare. She flipped her long black hair away from her face and solemnly marched to large flat stones that had been gathered in somewhat of a natural dais in front of where T'Pol sat. She had deep grey eyes, a recessive genetic trait on Vulcan, and T'Pol knew instantly who she was from her close study of the roster of the colony's children, After five weeks, she had become intimately familiar with each child and the detailed information in their file, from name, height, eye color, preferred food, and any other data Vulcan saw fit to track and preserve on its remote citizens, which other species would have considered encyclopedic. Having identified the woman as T'sdith, she tried to match the two guards to the other children in the roster. Eight years made a lot of difference between childish and adult features, but the guard with the lance might be Axarev and the one with the lirpa had a passing resemblance to Sisig. That meant that at least three of the colony's children had survived. Hopefully there were more.

"Are you T'sdith?" she asked.

The young woman was visibly taken aback, then drew herself straighter "I am Leader T'sdith, matriarch of the Na'gseihr Clan." T'Pol's eyebrows shot into her hair. A matriarch. At twenty. Impossible. "You say you are T'Pol of Vulcan and that you came to help" T'sdith went on, an undeniable twinge of sarcasm in her voice. "Now, tell us the true purpose of your presence.""

"You heard that we were still alive and came to finish what you started?" Axarev butted in.

T'Pol turned to him, puzzled, "I am Vulcan. Why would I kill the colonists?"

"Vulcans are our enemy."

T'Pol blinked. That was extremely illogical. "How can Vulcans be your enemy when you are Vulcans," she retorted.

In one bound Sisig was at her side, lirpa pressed tightly against her throat "We are not Vulcans." He growled. "Vulcans are the ones who massacred our parents."

T'Pol's eyes widened. Her mind reeled, trying to make rational sense of the situation. It just did not make sense. Did they truly think Vulcans had destroyed the Colony? That was impossible. She had a flashback to the Syrannite camp in the Forge and V'las blanketing the area with thermabombs, and closed her eyes. Perhaps what they said was true? Did the Vulcan High Command order the extermination of the colonists. But why? What would have been V'las gain in this? bombing a remote outpost of those he considered rebels was very different from bombing a colony of scientists. And who could have participated?

"I have no knowledge of the matter," T'Pol conceded, and Sisig straightened up, lirpa still at the ready but no longer at her throat. T'Pol went on "The Vulcan High Command was in power when Na'gseihr was established. They could have ordered the attack, but there have been many changes on Vulcan in the past few years. The Vulcan High Command has been disbanded. The Vulcan High Council now rules according to the teachings of Surak. Surak abhorred violence and would have never condoned an attack."

"Vulcan abides by the teachings of Surak as it sees fit" T'sdith responded with a sneer. She went on. "Why would we believe you? You are Vulcan and Vulcan sent troops to eradicate the colony. How do we trust that you were not sent by the Vulcan High Command?"

T'Pol silently considered the almost open display of emotion from T'sdith and Sisig, and the elements of paranoia and distrust in their statements, the incongruity of Sisig denying they were Vulcan, and the unwarranted violence in capturing her when they could have easily subdued her without force, lined these up against the absence of parental guidance or structure for five years. She had to consider that the surviving children may have started reverting to their violent, paranoid and suspicious past. The attack being by Vulcans could be a shared delusion. She needed to reach more than the three of them. Perhaps others were less emotionally charged. She spoke loudly, making sure her voice carried up the walls of the cavern to the ledge she could only see peripherally

"I am T'Pol of Vulcan and I am the science officer on board the starship Enterprise. Enterprise is a human spaceship of exploration. Its captain is Jonathan Archer. He was the one who received Surak's katra and helped discover the Kir-Shara. Vulcan is now following the original teachings of Surak as brought to us by the Kir-Shara."

"What is the Kir-Shara?" "What is a katra" "What is Starfleet" "Who are the humans" the questions came fast and furious from the ledge above them. She could sense the inquisitiveness of young and curious minds pressing against her. Curiosity was an overriding characteristic of Vulcans everywhere. T'Pol was satisfied that her approach had worked. And that her audience was hooked. There were more than the three youngsters facing her and she felt more certain about the situation than she had thus far.

"Kroykah!" T'sdith shouted at the ledge.

T'Pol pressed her advantage "How many children survived? How many of you are there? Can you tell us what happened?"

"We certainly will not tell you how many survived." T'sdith spat the words out. "So that you can kill them and finish what you started."

T'Pol narrowed her eyes in frustration. "We came here on a rescue mission, to bring you back to Vulcan. The transmission of your colony's distress message was slowed down by a black hole or Vulcan would have sent a starship for your rescue five years ago."

"The same way they sent a starship to destroy us." T'sdith's tone was bitter.

"Why would we go to Vulcan when they ordered the elimination of Colony Na'gseihr?" Sisig asked.

"Why should we trust you?" T'sdith spoke almost at the same time.

T'Pol thought for a moment, then she said "Administrator V'las and the Vulcan High Command murdered my mother in the bombing of another group on Vulcan."

T'sdith eyes went wide. Axarev and Sisig stepped back. Nobody said anything. The silence stretched for several seconds. Eventually T'sdith nodded. "What do you have to tell us?"

"First untie me. I will answer your questions and then we can talk about Colony Na'gseihr and its children." T'Pol added "It is illogical to keep me tied up when I do not know my way out of this cavern and there is very little risk I would flee." Anticipating the distrustful nature of the clan matriarch, she went on "I could also give you my word that I will not try to escape." There was no way she would allow herself to be separated from the colony's children but saying as much would compromise T'sdith's standing as clan matriarch and therefore it was neither necessary nor wise to bring attention to it.

T'sdith looked at her for a while, then gestured with her chin to the guards. Soon, T'Pol found herself free to move again. She gingerly assessed the wound on her head. Her eye was swollen almost shut. Being able to physically sense the damage made it easier for her to block the pain and she soon was able to move her head without paroxysms of nausea.

"First, I shall tell you about the Kir-Sharah," She sat in a meditation pause and waited. As expected, since she was an adult female and the oldest present, long-imprinted behaviors took over and the guards and the matriarch soon followed her cross-legged on the sandy floor. T'Pol started the recitation in the traditional manner, as her foremothers before her grandmother before her mother before her "At the time of Surak…" Her voice was the only sound echoing through the chamber, reverberating along the walls before finally reaching the hidden ledge, where an unseen army of ears listened in rapt silence.

She had been talking for quite a while when there was a rustle on her right. T'Pol felt more than saw the small figure hanging from the ledge, letting itself drop to the grounds before scurrying over to where she was, kneeling alongside her, close enough to touch yet not touching her. It was a young child, about eight years old. She felt a sense of contentment coming across her shields. Of course. The child would have been two or three at the time of the attack and would already have started meditating with his mother. Old enough that he could have survived the severing of the parental bond, too young to understand or absorb the matriarch's lessons of anger at and hatred at Vulcans and so young that he would be compelled to look for a replacement bond with any adult Vulcan. She stopped talking and looked at him. He hesitantly reached out to grab her wrist and she indicated her acceptance of the connection. As he could not easily maintain his hold on her wrist, he chose to put his hand on her ankle instead. At that, another rustle sounded, and another small figure awkwardly lowered itself from the ledge, this one a female of about seven years of age. She came over to T'Pol's other side, kneeling in the same fashion, and put her hand on T'Pol's other ankle. In quick succession, two more children joined them, choosing physical connection with the boy when they realized they were crowded out of direct access. T'Pol felt the presence of their unruly and untaught minds, and raised her shields to block them out without interrupting the connection. She went back to the story she was telling.

The retelling of the events that led to the discovery of the Kir-Shara and the changes it brought on Vulcan took hours. "The Kinshara has been fully translated and more and more on Vulcan are adopting it as the guiding principle of their life, starting with the High Coucil." T'Pol stopped, gauging the reaction of her audience before deciding whether to talk about Enterprise in orbit around the planet and their search for the children of Colony Na'gseihr. The four children, still linked to her through a chain of physical contact, were soundly asleep. She had gently pressed on their minds the need to sleep, well before she got to the part about the bombing of the Syrannite encampment in the Forge. There were now a dozen young Vulcans seated around the cavern, all younger than T'sdith, listening intently. She nodded to them and they bowed back. Nobody said a word.

T'sdith finally broke the silence. "So the Vulcan High Command, the government body before the discovery of the Kir-Shara has been replaced with the Vulcan High Council?"

"That is correct."

"Then the Vulcan High Council,the current government body of Vulcan, had nothing to do with the destruction of the colony and the deaths of our parents."

"The Vulcan High Council was formed after the date of the attack. It could not have ordered the attack." T'Pol went on "Are you the surviving children from Colony Na'gsheir?"

"Yes, we are."

"How many of you are there?"

T'sdith hesitated, still suspicious. "There are forty-seven of us."

T'Pol's eyes narrowed slightly. This was more than expected, less than hoped for. "Can you tell me what happened?"

T'sdith steepled her hands in front of her, obviously bracing herself. She talked in the cadence of a story well-worn and shared. "This cavern and the rooms behind it were the nursery school complex of Colony Na'gsheir. The colonists found the cave and arranged it to provide the children with protection from the random radio electromagnetic activity of the volcanoes, and also in case of a volcanic explosion." T'Pol nodded in understanding. It was a pre-Awakening Vulcan tradition to raise a community's children together in an offsite location where they would be shielded from predators, nuclear radiation, other warring clans and the dangers of desert life. Most of those places were caverns hewn out of rock, either above or underground. They were still being used. Vulcans were eminently practical, and long-memoried.

"One day, we heard bombs hitting the colony and we realized we were under attack. The upper classes went to stand with our parents and defend the colony. The lower classes stayed with one of our teachers, T'KehrK'runik" She turned to Axarev and Sisig "He held Axarev and Sisig back so that there would be someone to help protect the children if need be. But the attackers didn't find us. When the sounds of battle had died, T'KehrK'runik sent me out to check whether it was safe to come out. I was the oldest remaining of the _khu'nis leh-keh-steh_ but also the smallest, and could easily hide." T'sdith paused, looking unseeingly at the cavern walls "I snuck to the edge of the colony without being seen, but it had already been destroyed. Soldiers were going from house to house, firing rounds inside. I came back and we waited two more days inside the complex before T'KehrK'runik gave the order to go out again. By then, everyone was dead. T'KehrK'runik helped us bury our parents, and organized our survival."

"I grieve with thee." T'Pol said. "Where are the rest of the children?"

"The fracture in the rock leads to a complex of caves and other chambers where we live." T'sdith motioned to the flat stones on which she stood "T'Kehr K'runik had us dismantle the stone staircase that led to the ledge for added safety."

"Where is T'KehrK'runik?" asked T'Pol, hopeful that perhaps he was waiting somewhere in the complex with the rest of the children.

"His bondmate died in the bombardment. He chose to take his own life right before the next Time came upon him." T'sdith looked down at the ground.

T'Pol's eyes widened in sympathy. The Pon Farr would have turned K'runik into a powerful predator, the only available females were all grossly underage, and the two youths would have been scant protection against a full-grown Vulcan. His was the only honorable choice. She felt regret at the waste of a valuable life, one that would still have been much needed by the surviving children.

The four youngsters still physically connected to her all stirred in their sleep at the same time. T'Pol took a couple of minutes to steady her mind and straighten her shields, sending soothing thoughts to her young charges. The children quieted down in their sleep. A part of her took note of the herculean task ahead of having a temporary parental bond with four orphaned children. But the good of the many outweighed the good of the few, or the one. She would have to provide for the children's psionic needs until they could establish proper parental bonds with new parents. There would be many family members on Vulcan ready and willing to raise the young as their own.

Except that the clan thought that Vulcan was the enemy. "How did you know the attackers were Vulcan?" T'Pol asked.

"When I went out to find out about the outcome of the battle and the soldiers were methodically firing into the houses, one of them took his helmet off." T'sdith replied. "He was Vulcan."

T'Pol's eyebrow rose "Did you say he took off his helmet?"

"Yes."

"But the fighting had subsided?"

"That is correct."

"Vulcans do not usually wear helmets other than in the heat of battle." T'Pol frowned, trying to make sense of the new input.

T'sdith eyed her with little warmth. "But they did, and they were." she stated with finality

Carefully shielding the young children sleeping at her feet from her thoughts, T'Pol thought how T'KehrKurik would have considered all reasonable explanations for the presence of what T'sdith believed had been Vulcans on the planet surface. But he was not there and T'sdith was unmoveable.

"I cannot disclaim what you saw" T'Pol countered. "There is a starship that is not associated with Vulcan currently in orbit around this planet, ready to rescue you. I need to know if you would come with us. Or if you would stay here."

T'sdith looked at T'Pol silently for long seconds, then raised her arms high above her head "I call the Council of the clan Na'gseihr to meet at the appointed place when the sun rises above Volcano Tarik." She waited until she received a subliminal response that her command had been heard, then looked back at T'Pol. "The time is late. The children needs must be attended. We will convene again tomorrow. Thou gave your word thou would not escape."

"I will not escape." T'Pol replied.

"Good. We shall speak tomorrow" and with that T'sdith turned on her heel and walked to the side wall, where Sisig helped her up to the ledge, and disappeared in the shadows. The dozen or so young Vulcans looked at T'Pol hesitantly before scaling the walls back to the ledge, whisking the four youngest children who had been around her with them.

When the grotto was empty, T'Pol knelt on the sandy floor in a meditation pause and closed her eyes. While the situation was not conducive to meditation, due to stress and distraction, the position allowed her to still her mind while staying hyperaware of what was taking place around her. There was much to ponder.

Based on the records, Sisig and Axarev had been seventeen at the time of the attack, and T'sdith a mere fifteen years of age. They were not even teenagers by Vulcan standards. They had absorbed the premises of Vulcan tradition but were too young to understand the social structures, how everything was interrelated in harmonious logic. T'kehr Kurik had re-created the social organization that they were familiar with, but they did not have much knowledge or understanding, if at all, of the context and history behind these structures. T'sdith was the matriarch of their community when she did not have the age or qualities of being a matriarch. They had made the position one of age instead of wisdom or psionic powers. They had a governing body in the form of a Council without a full understanding of how a council operated or what it did. They called themselves the Na'gseihr Clan when clans on Vulcan were thousands of years old and were deeply intertwined socio-politico-economic bodies, not quickly formed pragmatic association of members sharing the same objective. There had not been a new clan on Vulcan since the Awakening. Certainly not a new clan that viewed Vulcans as their enemies. Which made it highly unlikely they would be willing to adapt to Vulcan society. Which made it unlikely Vulcan could accept their new social structure.

If she had been human, she would have sighed.

x x x

The sun was rising over the settlement when the noise of overhead engines disturbed the silence. This time the two shuttlepods landed on one of the grassy plazas. Eleven men exited, most of them MACOs. Soon a large number of equipment shimmered at a short distance from the shuttlepods and the men set to work.

Reed was in charge. As devised in the command meeting at 0400, the teams would search in two outward spirals, going in opposite direction from each other. The goal was to cover an area of 900 square miles by day's end, farther than anyone could walk on foot in any direction in a full day. Anything beyond that would have required the use of equipment foreign to the planet and then they had a different issue on their hand. As it was, Reed believed that T'Pol had somehow gotten incapacitated while looking for underground shelters and that they would eventually locate her.

He frowned as he caught sight of Tucker in the middle of one of the teams. He would much rather have passed on the help of Archer and the engineer. He certainly appreciated the reason why they had insisted to be part of the search effort, but Archer tended to throw caution to the winds and neither man had the level of training of the MACOs or Reed himself. He sighed. One day, these types of decisions would be his, and his alone, to make. And then he wouldn't be swayed by the ties of friendship. Until then, he had to accommodate the requests and minimize the risk.

To his surprise, he saw Tucker leave his team and walk over to the colony's research center, where a team of engineers were already at work trying to find any system worth repairing. Reed narrowed his eyes in sudden insight. If Trip went with one of the search teams, he would only know what that team was finding. If he was at the research center, where the teams had order to regroup at the end of the day or earlier if they located T'Pol, he would know what both teams were up to.

Reed smiled. Things were looking up already.

TBC


	3. The Decision

_All Vulcan terms are from the Vulcan Language Dictionary or invented. Some characters are borrowed from Paramount and will be returned._

T'Pol brushed the sand that had stuck to her face and hair while she was sleeping. Her head felt better though no completely back to normal. She entered a light healing trance while she waited for T'sdith to bring back news from the Council's decision, listening to the sounds of the clan waking up, young people going about their business, up and down from the ledge, softly spoken commands. Minutes ticked into hours. She interrupted her trance when the four young children reappeared at her side, greeting each one in turn. She knew the name of one of them, as he was on the roster, asked each of the other three their names, as they must have been born right after the last transport left. They eagerly followed her through a short guided meditation, and then waited quietly by her side, sitting cross-legged on the sandy floor.

T'Pol noticed that there were more and more bodies in the cavern. Youngsters of all ages were jumping or scaling down from the ledge, alone or in groups of two or three, and the cavern was filling up. Suddenty Axarev, then Sisig, jumped down to the floor of the cavern, a signal that the meeting was about to reconvene. T'Pol got up. Axarev walked over to her "I use the _ahn-soon_ to hunt down the _tarksum_ , but I had never used it against a person before. I did not know how much strength to apply" he said apologetically.

"Indeed." T'Pol replied wryly, nodding in acceptance. The healing trance had helped but she would be sporting a black eye for a number of days.

T'sdith came down from the ledge, walked over to T'Pol. "Does thou need sustenance or drink?" T'Pol was surprised that T'sdith had used the formulaic welcoming invitation that greeted desert travelers in ancient times. It could be a sign that they were open to following the Kir-Shara. "I am grateful for the offer of water" T'Pol gave the ritual answer in Vulcan. She didn't need to drink for several more days but refusing an offer of water was an express sign of enmity, an aspect of the tradition which she T'sdith may also be aware of. Sisig offered her a dented steel water canister, and T'Pol obligingly drank from it.

T'sdith solemnly walked to stand on the stone dais. Before she started speaking, she took note of the children at T'Pol's side, and looked at her. "These are the surviving _khu'nis dah-kehkuh_. T'Kehr K'runik bonded with them when their parents died." T'Pol nodded. There would be time to find out how many of the cohort of two to four years old there had been at the time of the attack that didn't survive. T'sdith went on. "None of the _khu'nis veh-dahkuh_ survived." T'Pol was saddened but not surprised. Any child below the age of two would have been terribly at risk after a severed parental bond. With other adults willing to step in, perhaps half of them would have survived. With only children around, they had had no chance. T'sdith seemed on the verge of saying something else. She turned to one of the young adults sitting on the ground and whispered something to him. He looked up at her, nodded, got on his feet and easily scampered up the wall, disappearing in the shadows of the horizontal crack. T'sdith turned back to T'Pol, palm out in a signal to wait but forestall any further discussion. A few minutes later the young man returned, carrying a four-year old down the wall back to T'sdith. T'sdith knelt and offered a parental greeting to the child, who had obviously been awoken from a deep sleep.

T'Pol's eyebrows raised to her hair. The child seemed about four years old, which meant that he would have been born after the attack. T'sdith gave him the parental greeting but she was far from sexually mature, she couldn't be his mother. And K'turick had died before his _Pon Farr_. T'sdith had also said that all the _khu'nis veh- dahkuh_ , the one year-olds, had died as a result of the attack. T'sdith caught T'Pol's puzzlement and turned the young child to face her, holding onto his shoulders. "This is my younger brother Severn. He was a few months old when our parents died." She looked over at T'Pol uncertainly "I was able to establish a parental bond."

"What you did is commendable" T'Pol reassured her, impressed that someone as young as T'sdith had managed the feat of keeping a newborn alive. T'sdith hesitated as if she were going to say something else, than seemed to think better of it. She didn't need to say anything. T'Pol could see that Severn was showing the signs of an inadequate parental bond, measurably below average in height and weight for a six-year-old. The parental bond was critical in helping children thrive during the first few years of life. Perhaps a priest would be able to create a full parental bond between Severn and another couple, if T'sdith allowed it and released her connection with her brother. He was still young enough that the effects of deprivation could be overcome but it was critical that he be returned to Vulcan soon.

T'Pol had a sense that T'sdith would not oppose the return of the four young children at her side or even of her small brother, aware that they required more resources and aid than the Clan could provide. She looked at T'sdith appraisingly. She must have high psionic capabilities to be able to establish a parental bond with a baby at the age of fifteen. And she was also the oldest unbonded female. It seemed that her position of matriarch of the surviving children was in effect appropriate. She could see how T'Kehr K'turik had set up a societal organization that would enable the children to survive for several years.

"What has the Clan decided?" T'Pol asked.

"The Council will not prevent those who want to go with you to leave. But the Clan will remain on the planet."

"That is highly illogical. And foolish" T'Pol's eyebrows had disappeared in her hair.

"We do not need your help. Our Clan had adapted to this planet. Our life is here." T'sdith's tone was dismissive.

T'Pol reflected that T'sdith had shown enormous strength and resolve in keeping the clan alive for five years. She was the matriarch and as such she would lead the children and the clan where she thought their best interests lay. But the burden of so much responsibility at such a young age may have closed her mind to any future different than the one she had been preparing for.

"What kind of life do you have here?" T'Pol countered abruptly "One where you live underground like animals, afraid that the attackers who took your parents will come back and claim your lives?" T'Pol looked around at the youth assembled in the cavern. "What will you accomplish with the next two hundred years of your life here? Recreate a pre-technical civilization and forget Vulcan and the scientific tradition that brought you here? Is that what your parents came to achieve?" There were uncertain glances all around.

"Our parents are buried here." T'sdith replied, but her tone had grown more hesitant. "They chose this planet. And they chose to raise us here."

"They logically kept their family with them, but they knew their children would eventually have to leave, there were not enough available mates in the colony." T'Pol pointed at Sisig. "The oldest among you is not yet thirty. How many of you are betrothed?" she let the full meaning of the words sink in her audience, turned back to T'sdith "What will you do when the Time comes upon them and your guards become your attackers? You are condemning the Clan to death. There are not enough of you for a sustainable community."

"How can we leave" T'sdith countered, "We have spent five years focused on surviving and have left everything we had ever learned behind. What are we going to do once back on Vulcan? The lessons our parents taught us are gone from our minds. We have no past and no future."

"Your past is Vulcan. Your blood is Vulcan. Your mind is Vulcan." T'Pol paused. "There have been a lot of changes on Vulcan and in space. There is now a Federation of Planets that Vulcan and Earth are part of. Vulcan is re-learning the Kir-Shara and needs citizens who are unencumbered by fake tradition. The Federation of Planets needs explorers who are willing to test uncharted territories. The lessons your parents taught you can be picked up and completed, once your survival is assured. You have a future."

T'sdith eyes were the size of saucers, as were those of the guards and everyone around. They had been shocked into silence. T'Pol waited. After a few minutes T'sdith seemed to come back to herself, she looked at her guards, then looked around at the rest of the assembly.

"I need to know where you stand" T'Pol prompted.

"The Council must speak again." T'sdith nodded at the guards and they helped her back up the ledge, then each took a running start and hoisted themselves after her. T'Pol looked around. She saw the entrance of a tunnel well hidden in the wall, but it was blocked by another guard with a spear.

x x x

T'Pol pulled out her communicator "I can contact my ship -" before she could finish, Axarev was on her, spear at her throat, and snatched the communicator away. T'Pol angled her neck away from the point of the spear, looking sideways so as not to appear to be threatening. Axarev brought the communicator to T'sdith. She examined it closely, then asked "This will allow those on the Enterprise to find you?"

"It will", T'Pol replied, "once we get above ground."

T'sdith nodded to Axarev, who grabbed a rock on the ground and crushed the communicator.

In great parts thanks to the constant need to shield the young children around her, T'Pol's tone was level "The Council has decided that the Clan would leave the planet. It would be to everyone's advantage not to destroy the equipment that can help achieve that objective."

"You are our security." T'sdith offered by way of an explanation.

T'Pol nodded "That is logical. In that case, we will have to walk to the surface and establish contact directly with the crew members who are searching for you." ' _And me_ ' she added silently.

"How do we know we are not walking into a trap?" T'sdith eyed her suspiciously.

"Your capturing me was not part of any plan. If you want, we can mind meld, and I can show you that I am telling the truth."

T'sdith took a step back in horror. "Mind-melding is a deviant practice," she exclaimed.

"Surak says melds are a gift of all Vulcans." T'Pol replied, looking at Axarev and thinking about the other Arev who had first uttered these words. One was the wind of the desert and the other the wind of the North. The coincidence was fascinating.

T'sdith seemed to waver, made up her mind "It's safer if I go alone."

T'Pol's eyes narrowed in annoyance. "It would be foolish not to have your guards with you when you fear you may be walking into a trap. And unless I go with you, Captain Archer may fear you are setting a trap for his crew." She squared her shoulders and raised an eyebrow at T'sdith. "The guards and I will go with you." Obviously the children were also part of the package. They rose as one, no longer making direct contact with T'Pol but still close enough to feel mentally connected.

T'sdith looked at her, considering, then exhaled loudly "You will have to be restrained." She turned to Sisig "Let Sirto know that he shall lead the Clan if I do not come back."

Axarev approached T'Pol, holding the bindings that had been restraining her when she regained consciousness. "I will also have to blindfold you," he said, quickly adding "I will not hurt you" T'Pol nodded her assent.

x x x

Commander Tucker was frustrated. Console after console, the engineering team's efforts to extract and save the memory banks had been met with failure. As the umpteenth screen flashed a blue "main memory drive corrupted or absent", or whatever the formula was in Vulcan, he had acquired enough familiarity with the language over the past several hours that he recognized the sentence as soon as it popped up, he kicked the cabinet next to him, a gesture that drew the surprised stares of his team but that had been eminently satisfying emotionally.

"I need to take some air" he announced to his crew, and walked down the long corridor outside the building. There he stood looking at the sky, his hands balled into fists at his sides. He was worried about T'Pol, he was starting to wonder if perhaps the feeling he had in the back of his mind that she was alive was not some deluded figment of his imagination, he was no telepath after all, and he couldn't get a damn data output on the colony or any of their works.

Exhaling slowly in a measured breathing exercise that T'Pol had insisted he learn when his emotional state ran so high that it upset her equilibrium, he looked around at the ruins of the buildings stretching from the research center throughout the outpost. He thought he saw something red flash between two of the buildings then disappear. He did a double-take, staring fixedly at the point where he thought he had seen it. Yes, there was definitely something red coming through the greenery of the encroaching forest. It disappeared again. T'Pol had been wearing her red uniform.

Trip started walking towards the color, thought better of it, and doubled back to holler down the hallway for a couple of MACOs or anyone to come over armed. When Hess appeared at his elbow, phase pistol belt at her waist. He motioned towards the forest, putting a finger on his lips, and they started walking quickly in the direction he indicated.

They were almost at the edge of the outpost when out of the surrounding brush came T'Pol with four young children walking so closely behind her they were almost tripping, followed by two young Vulcan men armed with lances and an awfully young Vulcan woman behind them. Trip and Hess stopped dead in their tracks, confounded. Quickly recovering his composure, Trip nodded at T'Pol. "Commander, it is good to see you." His eyes were alit with joy and relief.

"Likewise, Commander." T'Pol responded, looking back at him. She added "Could you let Captain Archer know Matriarch T'sdith of the Na'gsheir Clan is here to meet with him."

Trip pulled out his communicator "Tucker to Captain Archer."

"Archer here, Trip. What is it?"

"Captain, you had better come back to the research center right away. Commander T'Pol has come back with a ..." Trip wished he had better memory of alien names "... delegate who would like to see you."

"What?! T'Pol?! I'll be right there."

While they waited for the Captain, Trip took a careful visual survey of T'Pol, the heavy bruise on part of her face, the black eye - green, blue and black, to be exact - that was swollen half-shut. He glared at the matriarch and her guards who impassively looked back at him, as if this whole scene was an everyday event. If T'Pol noticed the examination, she gave no mark of it, patiently waiting, the four children at her side.

A column of light shimmered close by and Captain Archer materialized, answering Trip's silent question of how the Captain was going to be 'right there' when his search team was miles away.

T'Pol addressed Archer "Captain, I would like to introduce Matriarch T'sdith of the Na'gsheir Clan."

Dumbstruck, Archer looked at T'Pol, back at T'sdith, then gave the ta'al. "Live long and prosper."

T'sdith eyebrows rose. Seconds went by as nobody moved. Then, after what seemed to be an eternity, T'sdith returned the salute "Peace and long life". She was looking Archer and Trip over with great interest. Finally she spoke "You are human?"

"Yes."

"And everyone else aboard your ship is human?"

"Our doctor is Denobulan and T'Pol is Vulcan, otherwise everyone aboard is human."

"Good, we do not trust Vulcans."

Archer looked at T;Pol in shock and she cocked an eyebrow back at him. He noticed the restraint discreetly looped around her wrists and behind her back, and ending in the hands of the long-haired guard. "Why don't you release my First Officer and we can pursue this conversation?"

T'sdith turned to Axarev and gestured with her chin. Seconds later, T'Pol was rubbing her wrists. Archer walked up to her "You're ok?"

"Yes, Captain, I am fine."

Archer stared at her face "I'd rather Phlox take a look at you." He turned to T'sdith "With your permission, I am going to call my medical officer to join us. He is Denobulan and does not lookg like us." He pulled out his communicator. T'sdith and the guards visibly tensed up. Archer hurried on to add "We came to serve. There is no reason to fear us. You are children of the Colony Na'Gsheir, right?"

"That is correct."

"This will only take a minute."

Archer walked a few steps and talked into his communicator. "Captain Archer to Enterprise. Have Dr. Phlox transport, using my coordinates as destination point." He walked back to the group and a couple of minutes later Phlox materialized in a shimmering of light. "Captain" the Denobulan called to Archer, before noticing the three adult Vulcans in front of him. Very young adults, by all regards. He pretty much bounced across the few steps that separated him from the group. "Well, well, well, who do we have here?" His gaze then fell on the four Vulcan children grouped around T"Pol before coming back up to T'Pol. He started and went straight to her "Let me take a look at you." Phlox gently explored the confines of the bruise covering half her forehead with his fingertips, then pulled out a hypospray, fidgeting with the dial while he muttered "Hmmm, I would need to scan but nothing seems broken. Here, let me give you this for the pain." He injected the contents of the hypospray in her neck and T'Pol relaxed infinitesimally but still enough for Archer and Trip to notice. Phlox stepped back to where Archer and Trip were standing.

Archer decided to answer Phlox's very first question "This is Matriarch T'sdith -"

T;sdith interrupted him "I am Matriarch T;sdith, leader of the Na'Gsheir Clan. These are my guards, Axarev" the young man nodded "and Sisig" the other young man nodded. She turned to Archer "We understand you came on a rescue mission. We want to find out more about you and your ship before we decide whether to be rescued."

Archer stared at her dumbfounded before he caught himself. _Vulcans!_ They had rushed across millions of light years to hurry and save these kids and instead of being welcomed as heroes, these kids wanted to decide, _decide_ , whether to be rescued. He glared at T'Pol meaningfully but she just cocked the other eyebrow back at him.

"Fine, what do you want to know?" he asked.

"Where do you propose to take us?"

"A Vulcan ship is on its way to the next quadrant. Once we rendez-vous with them, you will transport aboard and they will take you back to Vulcan."

"Vulcan attacked our colony and killed our parents. We are not going to Vulcan."

Archer and Trip looked at each other in stupefaction. Archer finally found his voice "Vulcan is not in the habit of destroying its own colonies or killing its people," _especially not now that T'Pau is head of the Vulcan Council_ , he thought. There was the small matter of V'Las, and the massacre of the Syrannites at the Forge, but otherwise the Vulcan High Command had been very protective of its citizens.

"We are not Vulcans" interjected Sisig. Archer was completely baffled. He turned to Trip for support, but Trip was just staring at Sisig in shock. Phlox was the one who intervened "With apologies for any offense, you look Vulcan and based on readings from my scanner, your DNA is Vulcan, your physiology is Vulcan. I am afraid you are indeed Vulcan."

Sisig glared at the doctor and tightened his grip on his lirpa. Archer stepped into his line of sight to forestall any possibility of attack. This whole situation was getting out of hand. He quickly spoke up:

"Well, you know your parents were Vulcan, and their next of kin will want to meet you. I am sure there are also...huh... administrative matters relating to Vulcan to be seen to."

"But we do not want to go back to Vulcan." that was the other guard.

Archer was not a patient man to start with, and this was starting to grate on him. "Listen," he said, "Starfleet was asked by Vulcan to come and rescue the children of Colony Na'Gseihr. From the look of things," he stared at the group "at least seven of you are still alive. Our orders are to pick you up from this planet and take you back to Vulcan. Once you get there, you are free to do as you please, even if that means leaving Vulcan, but it's not something that we can debate right here right now. Now, how many of you are there?"

T'sdith spoke again. "There are forty-seven of us. We can take you the meet the rest of the Clan once we agree as to where you are taking us."

"That is not up for negotiations. As a Starship Captain, I have my orders, and I am duty-bound to fulfill them." Archer was close to getting angry.

That had the desired effect. T'sdith finally let go of her combativeness. "We will not stand in the way of your duty, Captain," she said. "We will deal with this at a later time," she added to Axarev and Sisig.

"Now, can I see the rest of the children?" Phlox interjected, anxious to make sure everyone was ok.

T'sdith nodded "We will take you back to the Clan."

T'Pol spoke up "While you do so, I will transport to Enterprise with my ... guests..., Captain, and get them settled in."

Archer nodded in agreement "I need you and Trip to prepare accommodations for forty-seven on board the Enterprise."

Phlox interjected "About those guests of yours, Commander..."

"I will explain, Doctor." T'Pol walked over to Trip, followed by her retinue of four.

"We'll need to take a shuttlepod back" was all he said. He knew he would eventually get the whole story, and right now he was more interested in making sure T'Pol got somewhere where she could take care of herself and eat. It didn't seem that sleep was in the cards right now. That was the moment Archer called out to them "As soon as these four are settled and you have figured where we're going to house the clan, come back here so we can prepare for evacuation." Yes, sleep was definitely not in the cards.

Archer turned to T'sdith and her guards "I understand you have issues with Vulcan, but T'Pol is a Starfleet Officer and my First Officer and she will oversee the evacuation."

Less than an hour, and he already had a headache. This was going to be a long trip...

xx


	4. The New Clan

_All Vulcan terms are from the Vulcan Language Dictionary. Some characters are borrowed from Paramount and will be returned._

Whatever it was that Trip had been expecting, this was not it. The conversation had started simply enough, with him asking about the four children who trailed her like her shadow everywhere. It quickly led to why she was blocking him out and her explaining that it was an unfortunate side effect of not letting the children's unchecked emotions run havoc with her emotional equilibrium. Trip's head swam as he tried to understand what T'Pol had just told him, about parental bonds interrupted too early, and temporary bonds that the orphans were compelled to try and establish with any Vulcan adult as a result of the early loss, and the fact she was the only adult Vulcan around. He could just stare at her in disbelief, once again conscious of the fact he had married a very alien woman.

"But all four of them?" he asked.

"There wasn't much of a choice" there was an edge in her voice, a telltale sign that this, while done willingly, was not the outcome she would have preferred.

"But what happens when they are reunited with their families?"

She looked at him, eyes wide, then shifted her gaze away and down "I'm not sure" was all she said. He felt a deep sense of fear and worry in the bond, but was not sure how much of it was his own misgivings being reflected back to him. Before he could inquire further, Reed called on the intercom to talk about accommodations for their new guests, and T'Pol needed to transport back down and start planning the evacuation, and there was no time to talk.

x x x

In the end, following Phlox's advice, they set up quarters that followed Vulcan tradition of grouping children in cohorts, loosely based on age. Trip was mentally reviewing the plans as he was walking to the empty quarters on E-deck, where Reed was directing two crews into removing the walls separating five crewmen's quarters to create one huge space for the twelve members of the _naukuh-led-dah_ class, with the bunks lining the walls and study stations in the middle of the room. Next on the list were the six members of the _Leh-reh-keh_ class, then six bunks for the _khu'nis leh-kau-sheh_ class, divided between male and female quarters, which didn't make a hoot of sense considering the kids were Vulcan and very unlikely to fool around, but Archer had decided would be more comfortable for the crew since they were all adult size. The nine members of the seventeen year olds-plus class would be treated like crewmembers, two of the same gender to a cabin, except for T'sdith who would get guests quarters as befitted her position of Matriarch. And Severn would stay with her.

The four orphans who shadowed T'Pol, Trip had quickly nicknamed them the "fosters", amused at the double meaning he was the only one to get1, would be housed in officer's quarters, two double bunks lining the room and four individual work stations in the middle. They had been bunking on cots in their shared quarters since T'Pol started working on the evacuation and he was looking forward to getting rid of the cots and the work stations that clogged their quarters. The children themselves were a very minor inconvenience, it was the academic paraphernalia that was a little much, especially since T'Pol had made it clear academics were a priority as the children were functionally illiterate.

Trip had a hard time reconciling Vulcans and illiteracy but he could understand that the fosters had lost their parents when they were roughly two years old, their teacher when they were roughly four years old, and that, while they knew how to read and spell at the time, that knowledge had been lost over the five years spent in survival mode. And it was not only academic knowledge. Over the years, the components that the Clan, under the guidance of their late teacher, had astutely recycled from what was left of the colony for their survival, had been consumed, had worn down or had broken. As a result the Clan had rapidly reverted to a pre-technology civilization, in spite of the fact they had done exceedingly well making sometimes ingenious repairs, or pragmatic inventions, to keep things going. They would have to learn or re-learn, depending on their age group, things such as not wearing the same tattered, threadbare clothes day after day after day, wearing shoes, eating with utensils, functioning in a technical world, and then of course about Vulcan, their personal and family history… the list went on and on. The learning curve would be easier for the older cohorts, who had benefited from a longer span of academic and social learning before the attack. But T'Pol had so little time to catch up the younger ones as much as possible before they met with the Vulcan spaceship. He didn't see how she was going to pull it off. But then she had always surprised him.

x x x

The evacuation had been uneventful and Phlox was radiant. "Well, Captain", he beamed "everybody is in fine shape. These, children, managed to survive five years in a semi-hospitable environment, and, other than being too thin and other expected side effects, the worse they have to show for it are an assortment of scars and some knitted bones."

Archer nodded. T'Pol was standing next to him, ramrod straight with her hands behind her back, the four young children around her modeling her stance. Archer let his gaze trail meaningfully over them. He didn't think she would allow them to keep following her while she was on duty, but he'd wait to see.

"What about psychological status?" he asked.

Phlox hesitated, shook his head slightly. "That is hard to say. The younger children should be able to re-enter Vulcan society after an appropriate adjustment period and some training, and should be able to adapt fully. The older ones…" he paused. "They spent five years thinking that Vulcan had tried to exterminate them. These were Vulcan children, which means they processed and integrated that knowledge more fully and quickly than if they had been human. And then they created their own society which was by necessity modeled on what they learned from their parents but also was exquisitely adapted to their needs for survival. And all of a sudden we come in from nowhere to argue their parents were not killed by Vulcans and propose to bring them back to Vulcan. There is a lot of trepidation, they trust us but don't know if they should, they're worried about what will happen to them on Vulcan." He paused. "I hope you realize, Captain, how much trust and faith they have chosen to place in us. Outside of the unspoken fear they will be killed on Vulcan they also worry about how they will fit. They do have a sense that with sizeable missing blocks in their education and knowledge of tradition, their social standing will be compromised. That will be harder for the older cohorts, who were the effective leaders of the Clan. I am not sure, Captain," Phlox paused again "that there will be a positive outcome."

Archer nodded "They already are having trouble adapting to the rules and regulations on a starship." Reed had reported a few incidents during the evacuation, whenever T'sdith and her guards felt they were prevented from doing whatever they thought was necessary for them to do.

"Actually, Captain" Phlox replied, "I would caution you to expect more adaptive trouble ahead, especially once the Clan has settled down and feels comfortable with the new environment. The move back to Vulcan is very stressful for them, and I would expect some form of acting out." Phlox looked at T'Pol. "Even Vulcan children act out." His voice trailed uncharacteristically "I'm not sure how that's going to go over once they're on Vulcan. It might be challenging…" If he expected an argument from her, he was surprised.

"Indeed, Doctor" T'Pol looked at both of them. "I also do not believe that their return to Vulcan is going to be … pleasant… or peaceful." She hesitated then went on. "Their return is necessary in order to establish their parentage and so that the clans can establish kinship." There were also small matters of succession and inheritance, and claiming their rights as lawful citizens. "After that, I am afraid that they will find themselves somewhat in... opposition... to Vulcan society. They have lost too much educational time to be able to catch up on their studies and re-enter Vulcan academia at an appropriate age-level. They have also missed out on some learning essential to their formative years if they are to remain on Vulcan. At the same time," T'Pol went on, "there is no disputing the fact of their survival and that they have formed a community with their own rules of behavior and societal structures." She glanced down at the children around her. "As Doctor Phlox said, the younger ones are young enough that they will be able to catch up. Some of the mid-range children may also be able to re-adapt, because they want to. As for the others" T'Pol paused, "their re-integration may be more difficult should they insist on maintaining their identity as a separate clan. There hasn't been a new clan on Vulcan in two thousand years."

"Well, we have a few weeks to sort it out." Archer replied. After they had found the children, and after the initial reports from T'Pol to Vulcan, Vulcan and Starfleet had agreed that the Vulcan ship would not _rendez-vous_ with Enterprise as initially planned but that another ship would meet them closer to Vulcan space, so that clan representatives would have time to travel to the transport. This gave them a few weeks to re-introduce the children to Vulcan culture. Archer turned to leave "T'Pol, are you coming to the bridge?" he called behind him.

She looked down around her. "As soon as I get my young charges settled, Captain."

As he walked down the corridor, Archer heard Phlox asking T'Pol "Commander, if I could have a word with you about your young charges?" "Certainly, Doctor. As soon as there's time." For a few moments, he wondered what that was about. And then he put the thought out of his mind.

x x x

T'Pol surveyed the entries she had just updated, confirming the death of some of the children listed on the roster. Except for Axarev and Sisig, the entire class of _khu'nis dah-leh-steh_ (17 to 21 year olds)2 had been decimated. Of the class of _khu'nis leh-kau-sheh_ (15 and 16 year olds), there remained T'sdith and three others. The others had been killed by poisonous plants, wild animals, infections and other ills that befell those who had to survive in unfamiliar wildernesses without any prior experience. The younger classes had fared better and were mostly intact. Unlike their elders, at first they hadn't been charged with venturing out of the complex to provide food for the Clan, and had benefited from hard-earned collective wisdom by the time they did. And then there were the youngest orphans, those who were with her, and Severn. She hesitated as she proceeded to update the roster with their information. Which clan should claim these children? Would T'sdith recognize them as belonging to the Na'gsheir Clan or did she want to outplace them as quickly as she could as they required resources the Clan could not provide? And what about the other living children, whose clan membership had already been recorded on the roster. Would those clans be willing to have their members switch allegiance to the Clan? She made a mental note to request a meeting with T'sdith and Captain Archer.

xx

"They are part of the Na'gsheir Clan." T'sdith spoke with finality.

Archer looked over at T'Pol. She had briefly updated him on the nomenclature of Vulcan clans. He could not remember the intricacies of the various clan lines in detail, but knew enough to know T'sdith's claim may not sit very well with the current clans to which the youngsters belonged.

"But the Na'gsheir Clan cannot provide for them. They need to establish orphan bonds with adult couples who can see to their proper development, and there are no adults in the Na'ghseir Clan." Archer winced inwardly. T'Pol didn't mince words. Once again, he got a sense of a definite lack of warmth between T'Pol and T'sdith. He had to side with his First Officer on this one. The matriarch was a tough act to digest. "It would be illogical to have them be part of a clan that is not raising them." T'Pol went on.

"There are many children who are fostered by other clans." T'sdith countered. "This would be no different. Once they are grown, they will come back to the Clan."

T'Pol's tone became clipped, and Archer knew she was getting irritated with the young woman. "By law and tradition, every child of the Colony belongs to their parents' clan. The clans will want the children to come back to them. Na'gsheir is not a formal Vulcan clan."

"We are a clan." T'sdith's voice rose. Archer knew intellectually that the surviving children had been cut off from Vulcan culture and it was to be expected that meditation and careful suppression of emotions may be slightly less of a priority when survival was at stake. Still, this was the first time he actually saw the end result. While reserved for a human, T'sdith was very emotional for a Vulcan. If they were all like that, he could see how the children's reintegration into Vulcan society might create some issues. T'sdith was talking heatedly "We became a clan over the past five years when nobody came to our help and we had to survive on our own. For us, our former clans are no more. For all we know, they might have participated in the destruction of the colony."

T'Pol blinked. This constant referral to Vulcan having destroyed the colony grated on her. T'sdith's stubborn insistence that there were no other explanations for what she believed she had seen as a scared and traumatized fifteen year old was an attack on logic itself. And yet logic dictated that the same government that laid waste to the Syrannite encampment on the Forge might very well have ordered the destruction of the Colony. "I doubt the clans would have had a hand in the murder of any of their members, unless the Na'gsheir Clan operates along other lines."

T'sdith visibly bristled at the underhanded dig, but T'Pol went on before she could reply. "Vulcan clans have been in existence since before the Awakening. Yet you propose to create a new clan based on five years of common endeavor." Her tone reminded Archer of Ambassador's Soval more contemptuous intonations.

"It is more than the five years we spent together surviving." T'sdith's plea became personal. "You have seen us, you know we have been cut off from Vulcan tradition. The clans will never accept our members the way they are. We, the children of the Na'ghseir Colony, have decided to create our own Clan where we can thrive as we are. That there has not been a new clan in the past thousands of years has no relevance to our choice."

Archer would always feel favorably inclined towards those who had issues with Vulcan. He looked over at T'Pol. "What would it take for Vulcan to create a new clan?" he asked.

T'Pol narrowed her eyes at him in displeasure. She reflected briefly before speaking. "There is no established process to form a new clan as the question has not arisen before. As matriarch of the new clan, T'sdith would have to petition the Vulcan High Council, more specifically T'Pau." She hesitated. "It could take some time for an answer."

T'sdith looked at T'Pol. "We will require help drafting the petition." Archer realized that T'sdith was using the royal 'we', talking about herself. The admission and the plea for help were proof of how far she felt the Clan had strayed from Vulcan tradition and academia, that she wouldn't trust herself with presenting their case.

T'Pol raised an eyebrow in response and Archer feared she was going to decline. Instead, she went back to the initial topic "What about the four youngest? And Severn?"

This time it was T'sdith's turn to fall silent. After a few seconds, she answered "The same logic applies to the children as to the other members. Alone, they will be outcasts. Knowing there is a clan they truly belong to will enable them to be successfully fostered." She paused for a brief moment then spoke again. "And Severn needs to be fostered." There was obvious pain in her voice.

"We will include them in in the petition to T'Pau." T'Pol replied. She turned to Archer "With your permission, Captain, I will reach out to the clans that the children's parents belonged to and ask for foster couples for the children. And also for Severn" she added, glancing at T'sdith.

"Please do so. Any chance these foster couples could be there when we hand over the children?"

"Unknown, Captain. I will find out."

x x x

Archer rounded the corner and almost walked into a cohort of young Vulcans on their way to visit hydroponics. Those were the ones who had been between five and seven at the time of the attack. He quickly stepped back, going through a rudimentary inspection as they went by. He was pleased with the results. Instead of the gang of dirty, gaunt and unkempt kids that they brought back from the planet, the young teenagers walking past him were clean and fed. The Vulcan style pants and tunics they all wore had not been slept in. And everyone wore shoes, quite an achievement. When the Clan first came on board, after concertation with Phlox and T'Pol, the quartermaster had created sandals that were modeled on Vulcan footwear and that would fit Vulcan feet. They had felt sandals would be less constraining than closed shoes after years of going barefoot and stood a better chance of being accepted. The sandals were readily worn by the older cohorts but after a couple of days it became clear that wearing footwear would be an acquired taste for the younger classes. In a stroke of genius, Trip had proposed lowering the radiant heat temperature in the floor plates a couple of degrees, which earned him a dark stare from T'Pol who found the environment of the ship outside of her quarters to be a close approximation of Antartica and did not welcome any further lowering of the ambient temperature. But the trick had worked. Within a couple of days, sandals had started magically appearing on Vulcan feet throughout the ship. Apparently walking on cold steel didn't score very high with Vulcans. The floor temperature had been brought back to normal since but the sandals had stayed on.

Archer frowned slightly as he next took in the various hair styles. The variety of shapes and lengths was fine with him and an improvement on the long and unkempt look on the planet but... he knew the quartermaster had liberally handed out hairbrushes, perhaps another acquired taste for some. He made a note to have Corporal MacKenzie take the group through a one-hour demonstration of how MACO's kept their hair coiffed and disciplined at all times – hopefully the boys would get the message. If he had a male MACO talk to them, they may all end up with shaved heads. He smiled at the thought. No telling how T'sdith would react to that. His smile grew wider.

They had decided early on that, outside of the structured computer classes that were mandatory and took most of the day, the children would be introduced to various facets of life through crewmen and women sharing their off-duty interests or any other non-academic but important life skill they happened to have some expertise in. Passionate practitioners usually made the best teachers. Early reports were that the youth were an attentive and interested audience and that the presenters needed to be really buttoned down. Not that it came as much of a surprise that the children were very interested in studying, as befitted all Vulcans. Overall, the cohorts had nicely settled into a routine of classes and lectures and adapted to the accoutrements of a civilized and technical society.

Archer reflected that Phlox's worries had been overstated. He wasn't sure whether T'sdith had anything to do with the smooth transition. He hadn't seen a glimpse of her or her guards since their conversation about the clan, but internal ship reports indicated she was plugged in the Vulcan database 24 hours a day. Not that he missed their interactions. Whether she was involved or not, and he didn't give a hoot one way or the other, things were falling into place nicely. It had been a rough start, but now they could start to relax and actually enjoy getting to know their young guests.

xx

T'Pol calculated that for the first time since she had transported back from the planet she would not be sharing her quarters with the four orphans. This was the day they were transitioning into their own quarters. She had requested accommodations on officers' deck so that they would be on the same floor in case they had trouble adjusting to the separation. In order to forestall any trouble she had also delayed their relocation for a few days until the older children were oriented and resettled so that the children would not sense and respond to the stress from the other cohorts as they adjusted to their new existence. Now that everyone else had adjusted the relocation of the children to their own quarters was a simple matter. She would bring them to their new space as soon as her shift ended. Her off-duty hours would still be spent tutoring them and picking up on the rudimentary strands of knowledge left from the time they had lost their parents, but she would now have the space and silence she required to successfully meditate. And sleep. That would be a welcome change. Both for herself and for Trip.

x x x

TBC

1 Note: "Foster children" or " **F** our **O** rphans **S** hadowing **T** 'Pol – FOSTers".

2 Note that T'Pol is referring to the cohorts at the time of the attack and Trip is referring to the current cohorts.


	5. Coming Apart

_Some characters are borrowed from Paramount and will be returned._

Trip woke up at the sound of voices in their quarters. He saw that T'Pol had gotten up, still in her blue pajamas, and was kneeling in the middle of the floor, exchanging a few words with T'Ilkwe. The sight jarred Trip out of the remnants of sleep. What was she doing in their quarters? And why didn't he wake up? He saw T'Pol nod, then realizing he was awake, look at him with an unreadable expression on her face. She brought the girl to the sofa and settled her down on the cushions before coming back to bed. Trip eyed her wearily and she looked straight at him "She will sleep here again tonight" she started. Trip interrupted her "and tomorrow night and the night after. And the other fosters will come in next and ask to stay here." He wanted to add ' _I told you so_ '.

They were almost back to sleep when the door to their quarters swooshed open and a small figure walked silently to their bed. T'Pol brought herself up on the bed. "How did he get in?" whispered Trip. "Obviously he observed us entering the code" T'Pol answered wryly as she got up. Trip rolled on his back, sighed, staring at the ceiling. Then he got out of bed, walked to the wall intercom, and pawed it. "Trip to Engineering."

"Aye, sir" That was Rostov, on night duty.

"Have four cots brought to T'Pol's quarters, on the double." Trip turned around, saw that she had brought the meditation pads together into somewhat of a mattress of sorts, on which the young boy was now lying. He went back to their bed, where he sat waiting for her. She soon joined him. "Perhaps I should move myself into their quarters" he whispered as she sat down. She didn't say anything but he could feel her staring at him. "I can't risk their picking up my thoughts, especially about you," he added.

"It doesn't work that way. They cannot pick up your thoughts." T'Pol closed her eyes at the alien-ness of her husband. The issue would never have arisen if he were Vulcan, she wouldn't have had to explain about parental bonds and temporary orphan bonds, and he would have known not to leave her alone as she was fostering young children, that she would need his uninvolved strength to lean on, to help maintain the required distance from the children. But it was illogical to dwell on it.

As they were sitting in silence, mulling over the new direction their life had taken, the door to their quarters swooshed open again and they both stared at the young arrival profiled against the light of the corridor. Trip idly wondered when the fourth one would find his way to their quarters.

x x x

Archer looked up at Reed.

"Ten incidents?"

They were in his ready room, where he had called Reed after checking the daily report for the day before.

Reed nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Ten incidents" Archer shook his head, disbelieving what his eyes were reading. In a normal day, in a normal month, they may have one or two disciplinary incidents. But ten in a single day…

"And it's getting worse." Reed added.

Archer nodded absent-mindedly. Phlox had been right. The first week had been no issue probably because the Clan was adapting to a new environment, new ways of doing things. Now the new had become commonplace and Archer felt as if he had invited an army of barbarians to nest in his house. He looked back at the padd in his hand. Incidents of theft, all of food; some pushing or shoving or other form of physical aggression. These were the more troublesome. There was a very real possibility that the Clan would become more and more violent as they realized the crewmen, who treated them with giant kid's gloves, would not fight back.

The intercom sounded and Archer hit it reflexively. "Security Guard Shang Du to Lieutenant Reed" came over the speaker.

"This is Captain Archer." Archer silenced Reed with a gaze. Now he would get first-hand knowledge about what was going on.

"Uh… We don't really have a situation yet but Lieutenant Reed asked me to let him know if things were not quite right. You may want to come down to the mess hall, Captain." Shang Du cut off the communication. Archer looked at Reed and they both got up and left as one.

xx

Archer stood surveying the mess hall, Reed at his side. Shang Du was right. This was not good. Two of the tables in the back had been commandeered by a group of Vulcans, young in age but not in size, who just sat there, while the crewmembers were squeezing themselves in the rest of the mess hall, piling up around tables that were not meant for so many, some of them even eating standing up. The youth were eyeing the crew with unsubtle undertones of contempt.

Archer walked over to the tables, stood glaring at them, hands on his hips.

"Gentlemen."

They lazily and insolently looked up at him, none of them straightening up, almost putting more effort into relaxing their stance. Archer felt the blood start rising to his head. "I understand this is all new to you, and I don't know how you did things on the Colony, but here on Enterprise we give others the courtesy of freeing space we are not using so that they can sit down and eat." Archer hoped his tone didn't convey quite as much sarcasm as he felt.

The youth on his right looked across the table at his counterpart, who rose an eyebrow in return. The gang slowly got up, making sure their body language indicated what exactly they thought about Archer and his request. One of them almost made body contact as he left the table, brushing by so close that another man would have taken a step back. Not Archer. He stood his ground and glared at them all the way out of the mess hall. Then he turned to the room. "Everyone, as you were." He called as he exited. "Reed, come with me." Behind him, the lunch chatter rose to a pitch as crewmen commented on the scene that had just unfolded.

x x x

"Stop that!"

The command had no effect, the kids were still going at it, locked in a murderous struggle of fists and teeth and knees and hands. Trip sprung up, pushing his chair off behind him, and reached into the melee, grabbing hold of a shirt collar, then another. He ended up with a couple of hissing and spiffing Vulcan boys, still trying to punch and throw in kicks at each other, even though they were too far apart to make contact. "Swetr, Iotssif!" at least he could now identify each of the fosters "for god's sake, what's gotten into you?! Swetr, drop that pen!" he added as he caught sight of the pen Swetr was holding in his hand in the manner of brass knuckles. It took another minute of hanging by his collar but the kid finally reluctantly let go. "Now, you go to one side of the room, and you go to the other. And I don't want to see you move from there!" Trip shoved each one in their separate corner, found his chair and sat back heavily in it. He turned to look at T'Pol, who was tutoring T'ilkwe and had silently witnessed the whole scene. She looked back at him with an air of puzzlement. They were both baffled by the going-ons. Every time Trip came back from duty he ended up spending the evening interrupting fights between the orphans, sometimes one on one, sometimes two or three on one, or two on two. They had gone through all the permutations, it didn't seem like the fights came from any sense of personal animosity. The girl was an active and willing participant, and even though she was younger and smaller, Trip had seen her viciously hold her own in the tussles.

"I'm going to the mess hall, you want some tea?" Trip asked. He needed to get his own adrenaline down. She nodded. "I'll be back in a half-hour." Trip left the room. He was going to use that whole half-hour to do nothing but eat, look at the stars, and hopefully forget the annoyance of the fighting kids.

A half-hour later, he stepped back gingerly in their quarters, tea in hand. A scene of utmost serenity greeted him, each child on his or her cot, occupied with his or her padd. He could see T'ilkwe was reading by the way she was mouthing off the words silently. She was the one having the most trouble learning. T'Pol was at her desk, catching up on the paperwork she didn't have time for while she was tutoring and raising the orphans. Taking care of the orphans extended her workday into the wee hours of the night and Trip would go to bed while she was still working. He would have gladly taken off part of the child-rearing duties, but there was the matter of the bonds which they had with T'Pol and not with him. Trip put the cup of tea on the corner of T'Pol's desk and she thanked him with a small inclination of her head. He got ready for bed and laid down.

Three minutes later he rushed out of bed to interrupt yet another fight, this time girl and boy against boy. T'Pol had to get up from her desk and help grab hold of one of the participants while he had his hands full with the other two. They looked at each other over the kids' heads. Something was amiss.

Once the children were safely asleep, which didn't take long under the no-nonsense glare of T'Pol, the adults retreated to their bed, where they both sat down.

"I don't understand" Trip said, "they were doing just fine."

"I, too, am at a loss to explain the situation." T'Pol answered. "I do not have experience with children or a background in psychology. The Vulcan children I know never behaved in such a manner. Perhaps we should seek guidance from someone who does?"

"We'll talk to Phlox" Trip agreed.

xx

Phlox sat back in his chair, chin in hand, carefully considering what Trip and T'Pol had just told him. "Hmm, so you say the children were fine while they were with you?" he asked T'Pol.

"Yes, Doctor" she confirmed. "There were no issues at all."

"But when you came back" he turned to Trip "soon after you came back, they became aggressive with each other? And they have been steadily aggressive whenever you've been off duty in your quarters?"

"Yes, but I didn't do anything." Trip didn't like where this line of questioning was headed. Back when he was a kid, it was usually true that in spite of his protestations he had done something. But he was an adult, who was starting to get peeved at the suggestion he may have something to do with it.

Phlox brought his hands up, sensing Trip's agitation. "It has nothing to do with you, Commander." He quickly said. Well, it has, but it's not about you." He added. He took a deep breath. "You see, the issue is that the orphans have grown up in a situation of deprivation. They lost their parents, they lost their parental replacement at a time when they were too young to be of much use to the Clan. As they still are. They no longer had any protector looking after their interests and were essentially a drain on the Clan's meager resources. They were years from being able to successfully hunt, or reproduce, or help in any way, so their societal value was very low. In some communities, they would have been killed or left to die. Fortunately, Vulcans tend not to be cold hearted and they didn't go that far. But they also didn't go out of their way to take care of the orphans. If you want, they grew up in, I believe the human expression is a dog eat dog world."

"But that's not the case anymore" Trip pointed out.

Phlox nodded "That's not the case anymore, but it will take a long time before that knowledge gets internalized and they change their behavior. In the meantime, they are essentially living in a world where they have to fight for everything that comes their way." Phlox eyes took a faraway look "I would surmise that being the lowest on the social totem pole, they got the smallest share of the food that the clan was able to gather. And then they would have to fight with each other to get their fair share." He paused, frowning "That would explain the scars on each of them: old bite marks, lacerations, they did seem too shallow to have been inflicted by the older kids. It also explains why T'sdith has been keeping Severn by her side." He looked up at Trip, glancing sideways at T'Pol "As you know, without the logic they adopted for their civilization to survive, Vulcans are a very aggressive species, prone to suspicion and murderous paranoia."

"But why are they fighting now?" Trip didn't understand.

"Oh that." Phlox pushed back in his chair again. "They have a temporary bond with T'Pol. You have a permanent bond with T'Pol. Whenever you're around, their access to her is threatened in an existential way and they revert to long-learned behaviors of fighting with each other over a scarce resource."

Phlox watched the two Commanders intently, silent as they absorbed what he had just told them.

"But then what can be do?" Trip asked.

Phlox sighed. "I don't have an answer for you. You can keep doing what you are doing and wait for them to realize there is always going to be enough of her. But I doubt that will take place in the next couple of weeks. In the end…" Phlox shrugged "it is really up to the two of you."

xx

"So what do you suggest we do?' Trip was staring at the ceiling. He was not able to sleep, still thinking over what Phlox had said.

T'Pol got up from her desk, walked over and sat on the bed. She took his hand. Trip knew instantly it was not going to be good. He didn't even have to feel her through the bond. From past experience with relationships, if she took his hand first it was going to be unwelcome news.

"We cannot continue as we are" she started "you need to be able to come to your quarters when you are off-duty and rest, not be subjected to the emotions and disruptions of fighting barbarians." Trip agreed. The last thing he wanted to do when he was off-duty was to knock heads with anyone. He waited for the other shoe to drop.

"They don't fight when you're not around" T'Pol went on.

Trip interrupted her. Might as well get it over with. "So the obvious solution is that I find myself other quarters so I can chill and they don't fight." His voice was full of sarcasm.

"I do not like it either" T'Pol said. _Then, that was why she had taken his hand_ , thought Trip. "But I do not see another solution, and I remind myself it is temporary." She added.

There were times when what made sense was so clear that there was no point debating it. This was one of those times.

x x x

Archer stepped into the mess hall and made his way through the crowd of crewmen around the food dispenser. Or at least the gaping hole that used to be where the food dispenser was, wires hanging loose. Reed joined him soon. Archer drew his mouth in a thin line "Where's T'Pol?"

"I'm here Captain" she stepped next to them.

"Any idea what happened here?" Archer growled,

"Not specifically. Perhaps you should be asking T'sdith?" Archer could have sworn she sounded peeved. He forged ahead "Like I will get an answer from her. Reed? what do you think?" but T'Pol had started responding "Considering the Clan had to feed fifty children daily out of the hunting work of a handful, it seems securing food resources would have been key to their survival. If they took the food dispenser thinking they were securing a source of food, they will soon realize it is a useless piece of machinery on its own. At that point they will bring it back."

Reed nodded "The best thing we can do is wait for them to bring it back. We could do a quarter to quarter search but that would be disruptive." Pointing at the hanging wires he added "If they didn't realize this was key to the operation of the food disruptor, the perpetrators are probably fairly unsophisticated. I would look at the younger cohorts. Which could create a fair amount of push-back if we were to start searching for them."

"Set it up the way you need to. I'll be on the bridge. T'Pol, come with me." Archer started leaving "Oh, and let Engineering know their services are going to soon be required." He walked quickly down the corridor, breathing out his fury, T'Pol keeping stride with him. Once in the turbolift, he turned on her "So far, we've only had to deal with stolen supplies, some fights here and there. What is going on here?"

She remain unperturbed. "I suggest you speak with T'sdith, Captain. As you know, I am not in on her plans."

Archer snorted "I guess now that the petition was submitted to T'Pau they're free to wreak havoc all over the ship." Too bad they had not done this before, he would have added a couple of paragraphs to the petition.

"These children have had to survive for five years in a semi-hostile environment, Captain. They're very adept at surviving and it will be a while before they fully appreciate and trust that they no longer need to engage in survival behaviors." She went on "They're also essentially unschooled and have not learned or have forgotten the rudiments of civilized behavior, or they would realize it is illogical to engage in thefts within the confines of a closed environment such as a starship."

Archer sighed. This was not quite he had in mind when they embarked on the rescue mission

xx

"Going anywhere?"

The three boys froze in their tracks, eyes wide, looking around for an escape, but the security guards flanking Lieutenant Reed made it very obvious they were trapped. Reed had to struggle not to laugh and instead maintain a face of utmost severity.

"Guards, please take a hold of those young men." He instructed the security team and each boy found himself securely within the grasp of a pair of burly security guards. Reed had half a mind to put them in restraints, but given their age that seemed to be overkill. As expected, the culprits were the fourteen-year olds within the Clan. He inwardly rolled his eyes at the universality of the teenage miscreants. "Keep them here while Commander Trip and I look over the dispenser."

Trip had just turned the corner, paused briefly in disbelief when he saw the kids surrounded by their keepers, and walked over to Reed. He gave him a long look and Reed answered with a brief shake of his head. The two men walked through the doors of the mess hall. When they were halfway to the dispenser, Trip broke the silence "What was that about?"

Reed shook his head "Those were the kids who stole the food dispenser. I thought it was worthwhile to give them a little scare."

"They survived an attack, the destruction of their colony and the death of their parents. How scary do you think this is?"

Reed fell silent. Trip had a point. Still. "We have to go by the fact they haven't had many constraints on their behavior for the past five years, if at all. Outside of what their matriarch may have made them do, and from the looks of things, as long as they brought food back, they could pretty much do what they pleased."

Trip had been looking over the dispenser while Reed was talking and he whistled in appreciation. "Don't know where these kids picked it up, but they pretty much did a flawless job. All the connections are back the way they should. Ah. Just this one point," He picked up a belt tool and started fiddling with a control on the inside of the dispenser. "They couldn't see that the serving moderator was on the inside. There." Trip put some effort in tightening what he was looking at. "Like nothing ever happened." He put the tool back on his magbelt. "What are you going to do now?"

"Bring them to Archer. After plenty of waiting." Nobody had yet improved on a visit to the principal's office.

xx

Mama bears had nothing on Vulcan matriarchs. The thought briefly came to Archer as he stood nose to nose with T'sdith in his ready room, neither of them giving an each of physical or emotional space.

Disagreeing with Reed's surprisingly soft touch, he had had the youths escorted to the brig, armed guards visibly stationed in front of the glass wall. And then he had waited, watching the chronometer built in his chair's arm. Thirty-three minutes and four seconds. That's how long it took for T'sdith to walk onto the bridge and plant herself in front of him, asking for a meeting. Which meant she had a tighter hand on what was going on within the Clan than he had thought.

Even though she entered the bridge in her usual solemn and sedate manner, it felt to Archer like she stormed in like a fury, robes a-swing and dark clouds massed around her head. But when he looked at her, all he could see was a small woman sedately standing there with her chin upright. He gave up trying to reconcile the feeling and the figure glaring at him.

"Yes?" he said, knowing full well why she was there.

"You have jailed three of my Clans" she said calmly, though radiating sputtering ire. "Release them at once."

"Why don't we go to my ready room and we can talk about some things." He smiled at her, inviting her with a broad gesture of his arm.

"Very well." She walked behind him. Every human on the bridge would afterwards exclaim how they could have sworn she stomped there so fast a wind rose in her wake.

Archer looked over at T'Pol, deciding whether to invite her along. She stared back at him impassively, and for the first time he had an inkling that she was finding the whole situation very entertaining. Knowing how cordially T'sdith disliked her, he figured he was better facing the harpy alone.

The door to the ready room closed. The humans on the bridge found their gaze drawn to it every time Archer's voice could be heard shouting something indistinct at his counterpart. Either T'sdith didn't raise her voice or her voice did not carry as much, but the yelling went on and nobody came out of the ready room. Glances were exchanged around the bridge. T'Pol was the only one working at her station as if nothing untoward was taking place. Suddenly another voice was heard through the door, a female voice, shouting something back. T'Pol raised an eyebrow. The heated exchange lasted a couple more minutes, then voices died down, and another ten minutes later Archer came out of the ready room, followed by T'sdith. Both their jaws were set. He followed her in the elevator.

That is when the entire bridge crew, save one, sighed in relief.

xx

Trip was huddled with Hess, looking over the duty roster, when he heard the footsteps. He looked up to see Archer walking the three boys into Engineering, the matriarch behind him. Hess excused herself and Trip was left alone to wait for the delegation, wondering.

"Commander Tucker" Archer spoke loudly "These young men here have had too much time on their hands outside of their studies. I believe you have some engineering stuff that needs to be cleaned and they volunteered to do it for you. You can release them at 2000." Archer turned to the boys "I expect there will be no more trouble" and left the deck, matriarch in tow.

Trip stared at the children, thinking. He decided he would follow T'Pol's manner when he talked to them, quietly, but explaining everything there was to explain. The boys were smaller than regular crew members, which allowed them to reach areas that would normally be off-limits during regular cleaning cycles. They would be spending the time on hands and knees inside Jeffries tubes, going after every last square inch of unreachable space that they could get to.

By the time 2000 rolled around, the boys were dirty and tired, but they had done a good job. Trip convened a debrief meeting before sending them on their way to dinner. "Thanks for your help today, things always work better when the work environment is kept clean. Do you have any questions?"

He certainly was not expecting the deluge of questions that came back his way. 2000 turned into 2100 then 2130 when the call came over the intercom "Archer to Tucker."

"Yes, Captain."

"Is there an issue, Commander?"

Trip stared at the intercom, wondering why the question, then suddenly realized the time and dinner. "No issue at all, Captain. We were just wrapping up a few things. I'm taking the boys to the mess hall right now, I'll have dinner with them." He hustled his young charges out of Engineering.

x x x

TBC


	6. Coming Together

"Sir?"

Trip looked up from the wrap mix matrix screen and found himself eye-level with a boy he recognized from the day before, the one who had had the most questions, and the most insightful ones. Now what was his name... ah, yes, V'ettelk. "Yes, V'ettelk," he asked.

The boy was already close to five feet tall and he straightened to his full five feet. "I was wondering if I could help out in Engineering, after classes." Trip paused, considering. The boy had done good work, he was smart enough and technically savvy enough that he had dismantled and put back the food dispenser pretty much by himself, the other two boys had mostly been muscle he suspected, and Jonathan would welcome anything that kept the Clan from wrecking even more havoc with the orderly functioning of Enterprise. "Well," he pulled on his lip "I don't see why not. Are you done for today?"

"Classes are over."

"Ok, then let's grab a wrench, I'll show you some relay heads that need to be disassembled and cleaned."

x x x

Chef suspiciously eyed the teenager who had just walked into the kitchen. It was a well-known fact across the ship that the young from the Clan hoarded food like the next great famine was on its way, and he didn't trust this one not to harbor some nefarious scheme involving his food supplies. "Yes?" he harrumphed.

The teenager politely folded his hands behind his back "I would like to help in the kitchen" he said. Chef was taken aback. The kitchen was his kingdom and apart from the stewart, no crew member had ever been foolish enough to try and help in the kitchen. Actually, come to think of it, no crew member had ever been interested enough to help out in the kitchen. He eyed the boy appraisingly, remembering his own culinary passion when he was about the same age. He looked around at his kingdom. Everything was well ordered, every piece of equipment exactly in its place, but some tasks still could not be done with equipment only.

"Your matriarch is ok with that?" he asked gruffly.

The youth nodded "As long as I help after classes."

Chef pointed with his chin towards the knife rack. "Well, let's see what you can do with a knife. There's a twenty pound bag of carrots in the pantry, waiting to be prepared for julienning. Think you can handle that?"

"I can" The boy's tone was definite.

Chef snorted. Like the kid knew what julienning meant. Like there had enough food down on that godforsaken planet that the Clan had to elaborate complex recipes to break the boredom. But the boy had guts, he would at least give him that.

The boy stood there, looking around with some hesitation. "The pantry is behind the double doors in your back," Chef threw him a life line, "and carrots look like shortish thin orange sticks. What's your name?" he added.

"My name is S'ehsgu."

"Ok, S'ehsgu. Get to it." Chef smiled to himself. This was going to be interesting.

x x x

T'Pol woke up with a gasp, took a few minutes to orient herself, realized that T'ilkwe was having another nightmare. She extracted herself from the bed, wondering when she would get a night of uninterrupted sleep, and walked over to T'ilkwe's cot. The child was muttering in her sleep, trashing about, and T'Pol gently shook her awake. T'ilkwe's eyes were wide with fear and confusion. She instinctively threw herself at T'Pol, hanging on for dear life.

T'Pol guided her out of bed and to the meditation pads, lit a candle, and helped her enter a meditation state with soothing guidance. Tomorrow, they would have to have another lesson about suppressing emotions. The children were progressing well but their successful learning of suppression and meditation techniques was intimately connected to their understanding and knowledge about Vulcan, its history, Surak, and the Kinshara. Teaching them was a little like decorating a house while laying its foundations and building its walls. Perhaps at some point the four children would all have a restful night. On the same night.

x x x

Travis was reading in the sweet spot, glad to be in an environment that reminded him of the freight he was born on, when the hatch opened. He looked up to see who was coming. Few crewmen knew about the sweet spot and even those who did seldom ventured there, thrown off by the unusual upside down position. As much as their brains told them it was perfectly fine, their minds could not quite accept that it was. The auburn hair was the first thing that Travis noticed. The newcomer looked up at Travis and he recognized one of the boys from the Clan, no more than fifteen years old based on the roster of faces he had skimmed through when they brought the children aboard. Travis braced himself inwardly, keeping his jovial demeanor on "Hi there, lost your way?"

The boy pushed off with his arms and floated to where Travis was, executing a flawless 180 in the process. "No, I know my way around. I wanted to be here." He sat cross-legged on the ceiling in the same position as Travis. "How many different figures can you execute?" he asked. Travis noted that the kids; eyes were the color of sand. He decided to humor him. "I am the helmsman of the Enterprise" he answered "I know pretty much every air figure that can be done." '

"My name is Xifmer. I can do a loop-the-loop." The boy replied and launched himself towards the G wave, doing a quick head over heels that showed a mastery of the form. "Now your turn" he told Travis.

A couple of hours later, the two of them stopped, pretty much out of breath after having called and executed moves of increasing daring and complexity. Travis laughed "That was some workout. Do you want to do that again?"

Xifmer nodded "I can come every day, after classes."

Travis laughed again, a rich, easy laugh. "Every day might be too much fun."

"Don't you train every day?" the boy asked.

Travis shook his head "That would be overkill. Once you know how to execute a move, the thing is to keep in top shape so you can do it again whenever you need to. We're not preparing for some kind of competition."

"Where do you come from?"

"You mean my skin color?" Travis was amused. "My ancestors came from a place on Earth called Africa, but I was born in space, on a freighter. I am called a boomer."

The boys' eyes opened to the size of saucers. "Please explain." And Travis started telling him about the freighter he was born aboard, his family, his father, their business, his brother, and his friends. Hours later they agreed to meet again the next day.

x x x

Trip stepped into the elevator eyes on his padd, looked up, and found himself staring into his wife's eyes. He smiled in pleasure and her eyes smiled back at him. Then he frowned as he took in the lines of exhaustion that had multiplied around her eyes.

"You look beat!" he exclaimed. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

She eyed him for a moment, obviously running through possible scenarios, but the elevator stopped before she could reply. They both stepped out in silent understanding to pursue the conversation.

"Perhaps you could take the children to the gym tonight for an hour. I'll use the time to finish the daily reports."

"Uh-uh, not happening." Trip retorted. "I don't think that's going to work." He folded his arms and cocked his head at her.

"Trip!" she exclaimed. Before she could go further, he went on "I take the fosters for an hour to the gym and in the meantime you sleep."

T'Pol furrowed her brow "That is too little time for any type of recuperative sleep."

Trip had already prepared for the objection. "Fine. I take the fosters for an hour and in the meantime you meditate. That's the only way this is going to go down." As he saw T'Pol ready to object again, he added "I could make this an order" and smiled his most brilliant smile at her. T'Pol's nostrils flared. Trip knew that within the very complex and subtle intricacies of the bond, he could as her bondmate actually order her. He had never tried pushing that particular button as he knew the fallout would be dire, but sometimes he enjoyed letting his finger hover over it, ready to press down. This was one of those times. And it always got a rise from his mate, which was added fun.

T'Pol blinked. ' _Gotcha'_ , thought Trip. "Fine, I will meditate," she huffed.

"Good" he flashed his brightest smile. "I'll come by at 2000, and I'll bring them back at 2100. Make sure they have loose clothes on" and he turned and walked away.

xx

Trip stepped into their quarters, herding four exhausted kids ahead of him. T'Pol opened her eyes and raised herself from her meditation pillow while the kids wordlessly got themselves ready for sleep and in their cots. Trip could see the meditation had done her a world of good.

"D'you want to go to the mess hall and get some tea?" he offered, unwilling to leave her quite yet.

She pondered the offer "It is the first time the children are secure enough in the bonds that they could go with you. Leaving them alone on the same night might be more than they can handle," she eventually offered.

Trip nodded. She had a point. He suddenly had an idea, but just as he was opening his mouth to talk, they heard the unmistakable sounds of the fosters starting to go at it again. Trip rolled his eyes. _Would that ever stop?_ Before he could do anything to intervene, T'Pol got up.

" _Kroykah!_ " Her verbal command was followed by stunned silence and the obvious defusing of budding hostilities.

Trip smiled inwardly. So T'Pol was finally developing her parental muscle. He had been astonished initially at how she let the fosters run rampant over her. He had had the feeling then that she had expected them to behave as adults in miniature bodies, and even after she realized over the span of a few days that this was a false premise, was still hesitant to say or do anything that would upset them in any way. Obviously they were not the only ones that had grown more secure in the bonds.

"Tell you what," he resumed. "We'll make this part of their daily routine. I'll come by every day at 2000, bring them back at 2100. Or later, if I see they can take it." ' _And at some point we'll be able to sneak out after they fall asleep and have some time to ourselves_ '. He knew her shields were too high to pick up his thoughts, but she didn't need to be in on the plans for him to make it happen. Perhaps, eventually, he could even move back into their quarters. ' _Yeah, keep dreaming, Trip_ ' Trip admonished himself ' _maybe if we had a couple of months ahead of us, but not in the next two weeks._ '

x x x

"How many languages do you know?" Hoshi thought perhaps she hadn't heard correctly. She looked up from where she was sitting and found herself staring into the eyes of a female Vulcan teenager, the one with dark grey hair and eyes. "Hi there" she cheerfully greeted the newcomer, "I am Hoshi, and your name is..."

"I am called Tsaris" the girl responded, then repeated "How many languages do you know?"

Hoshi laughed. "Do you mean just spoken languages or also unspoken ones?"

"Unspoken languages? Explain."

Hoshi launched into an explanation of communication in its various forms, including body language and the color language of the inhabitants of Wertrev III. Soon, Tsaris and she were the only ones left in the mess hall, and she was still talking, going over fairly complex concepts that Tsaris did not seem to have any difficulty grasping. Until they got to how various Earth languages were derived from a common root language that survived in its many forms. Hoshi used the word 'dress' to illustrate the concept. Tsaris looked blankly at her.

"Dress"

"You know, like a dress versus pants." When she realized this explanation was going nowhere fast, Hoshi called the Earth database on her padd to illustrate the concept. Tsaris looked as dumbfounded as ever. Hoshi finally exclaimed, half in exasperation "You've never seen a dress?"

"Not like the ones you showed me. My parents had robes for special occasions, but they didn't wear a dress."

"Honey, only women wear dresses on Earth. Well, at least in most earth cultures, only women wear dresses." Hoshi looked Tsaris over, thinking how pretty she would be in a dress with some jewelry and her hair put up. She had a sudden inspiration. "Come with me, we're going to play dress up."

"Dress up?"

"Don't worry, I'll explain." She herded Tsaris out of the mess hall.

x x x

MACO sargent and chief Hopes was standing on the sidelines, looking at the two Vulcan men practice in the gym. They were both on the cusp of adulthood, and obviously very inexperienced about how to exercise or use the equipment around them, but there was a definite power and agility to the shorter one. Hopes mulled that he would be a good MACO, if ever he was so inclined. Obviously he was not the only one to recognize raw talent. He saw Perkins walk over and propose a sparring match. Now what was Perkins getting himself into. Hopes stepped closer and walked onto the matt. But the young Vulcan seemed to take it in stride.

"What are you doing?" Hopes asked the two of them.

Perkins snapped to attention. "Sir, Sikyd here and I are going to engage in a sparring match, sir."

Hopes turned to Sikyd. "Are you sure you want to do this? My men are trained professionals." His tone implied that the Vulcan was out of his league.

The young Vulcan stiffened. "I was one of the main hunters for the Clan." _Hunting is not fighting_ thought Hopes, but instead he just said "I will referee the match." That would enable him to keep an eye out on things and make sure the young man was not hurt too badly. "Have you decided what form of fighting?"

Perkins looked over his adversary. "Let's make this a free-for-all, I don't think Sikyd has much experience with form."

Sikyd nodded his approval and the two men started circling each other. Perkins lunged first, easily avoided by Sikyd. Hopes noted that the young man was fighting smart, letting his opponent whose fighting style and prowess he didn't know, show him how he would attack. Perkins lunged left, again easily avoided by Sikyd, but Perkins had anticipated the same defensive move and his foot connected right were Sikyd had moved to. Sikyd shook the blow off as if it was a mere swat, another point noted by Hopes. Perkins packed a punch and the blow would have sent another opponent into a TKO count. This time Sikyd crouched, keeping his balance lower to the ground, still letting Perkins make the first move. But when Perkins initiated the next combination lunge-circle-kick, Sikyd was ready, picked up Perkin's heel before it could connect, and flipped the man on his back. Perkins landed on the floor hard, grunting as air escaped his lungs. He quickly got up to his feet, shaking the dizziness. Hopes' esteem for the young man deepened. For someone who didn't know how to fight, he certainly had some impressive natural abilities. He noted that the Vulcan didn't know to follow the latest brilliant move with a quick attack. Instead he was letting his opponent recover. A newbie mistake.

Hopes could not pinpoint exactly when things went off the rails, but he certainly could tell they did. One minute there was a sparring match, then Perkins scored a point and knocked Sikyd over, taking him down to pin him to the matt, the Vulcan avoided the pin and the next thing he knew, he attacked. But this was a true, going for the jugular attack, and only Perkin's quick reflexes saved his neck. Now Perkins was on the defensive, unsure how to end the match, and Sikyd was going for the kill. Hopes tried to step in, declare the match a tie before it escalated. Instead he was sent rolling across the room by a broad but effective swipe from Sikyd. Off-duty crewmembers who had convened around the matt to watch were stepping back in confusion. Hopes got back to his feet, ran to the nearest intercom. "Hopes to Security, we have a situation in the gym."

Hopes turned back and saw that they indeed have a situation, and it was growing worse. A couple of MACOs had joined in to protect Perkins and in response the two guards of the matriarch, which must have stepped into the gym while the sparring was going on, had come to Sikyd's help. There were now six people on the matt and the match was quickly turning into a general brawl. And one Vulcan was still going for blood, Hopes could not vouch for the other two. While outmatched in technic and experience, the Vulcans were impressive warriors and were giving his men a lesson in not underestimating one's opponent. Hopes saw the long-hair guard send McKenzie flying against a wall. She laid in a heap for a few seconds before getting back to her feet and leaping back into the fight. More MACOs were stepping onto the matt. Hopes needed to get things back under control fast. The MACOs were being held back by the fear of hurting the younger men, but the kids had no such compunction. "Neutralize the youngest" he screamed. Once Sikyd was out, everybody could start calming down. He saw a couple of MACOs converge on Sikyd and try to get a hold on him, but the young Vulcan was fighting for his life, and too dangerous to control. The two guards were defensively making sure his men could not get to Sikyd, which was not helping. He shook his head. What a mess.

" _Kroykah_!" the powerful yell reverberated throughout the gym, freezing everybody in their tracks. The effect on the Vulcans was even more powerful. They all stopped fighting where they were. Sikyd blinked a couple of times. Hopes turned and was surprised to see the matriarch make her way to the matt. The young thing had quite a set of lungs on her.

She looked none too pleased. Behind her, Archer was walking as fast as he could, his face a mask of cold fury. He planted himself in front of Hopes. "What's going on here?!"

"Sorry about the fight, Captain. Perkins and Sikyd, that's the youngest Vulcan, were engaged in a sparring match, but all of a sudden the Vulcan started attacking for good. It looked like he was going to kill Perkins. My men jumped in, and then the guards," he nodded at Axarev and Sisig "came in on Sikyd's side. It got a little confusing."

Archer seized the bridge of his nose, exhaling very slowly. "Sargent Hopes, did you check that the Vulcans knew what a sparring match was?"

Hopes looked at Archer with a shocked look on his face. "No sir, I mean, I... we all know what that is."

"Well" Archer said very softly and slowly, "why don't you explain now, to the matriarch, what a sparring match is."

Hopes did as he was told. It was only when he saw the young woman seem to relax that it dawned on him what it must have looked like from the Vulcans' perspective. If Sikyd didn't know what a sparring match was, he must have thought he was fighting for his life. The guards didn't know this was supposed to be an exercise and jumped in to protect him. All in all, they were lucky there was no serious harm…

The matriarch said something in Vulcan to the three men and they walked off the matt to stand by her side. She regally looked over the entire assembly, turned on her heels, and walked straight out of the gym without another word or glance. The three men were falling in line behind her when a hand reached out and stopped Sikyd. He turned around and found himself staring at Perkins. The MACO's face, like the Vulcan's, was bloodied and bruised and Perkins was keeping his right arm tightly against his rib cage. He extended his left hand out "That was a good fight, mate. I'd like to pick it up again when your lady leader lets you."

The young man stared at the extended hand, then looked at Perkins, unsure as to what to do. Hopes and Archer didn't say a word, letting the scene unfolds. Then Sikyd bowed to Perkins "Indeed" before joining the guards a few feet away. The kid would be sporting a hell of a shiner, Hopes thought. He watched the three Vulcans step out of the gym, thinking to himself. Archer's voice next to him brought him back to the present reality. "Are we done here?"

"Yes, Captain, we're all squared away."

"Well, Hopes, next time you and your men have a brilliant idea to cross-train with the Vulcans, just make sure they've read the rule book." Archer started leaving, turned around after a few steps "I hope there are no major injuries?"

"No major injuries, sir. And sir, thank you." Archer shook his head and left. Hopes was thinking that he really meant the thanks. Archer may not be enjoying ferrying the kids, but, besides a golden training opportunity, he had just given Hopes some really interesting things to think about.

xx

Hopes saw that the long-haired guard had returned, and was mowing his way through the exercise equipment. He was walking to him when before he could get there MacKenzie came from the side and talked to the young Vulcan. Hopes groaned inwardly. God, he hoped she was not getting the whole lot of them in trouble again. The young Vulcan nodded, and McKenzie and him squared off on the matt. Hopes's stomach fell to his heels. What the hell did she think she was doing?! Before he could intervene, the two of them were squaring off in a wrestling match.

Hopes had to stop and observe appraisingly. Quite a few other crew members and MACO's were on the sidelines, watching with pleasure. McKenzie had the advantage of training and know-how, but every time she seemed to get the upper hand, the young Vulcan would do an unexpected move that kept him from a hold. A couple of times, he managed to grab her and get her to the floor, and only her excellent technic kept her in the game. After a half-hour, there was still no clear winner, though she would have won on points. Hopes saw her say something to Axarev, whose name he had learned while watching, and the Vulcan nodded in return. She tapped the matt twice, calling a tie. They both got to their feet and bowed to each other. As Axarev stepped off the matt, Hopes was there. "Listen, I was wondering, would you like to train with us?"

Axarev looked at Hopes questioningly. "We train every morning at 0530, two-hours. You don't have to be a MACO - you can get a few things from us, perhaps we can show you a couple of moves."

"I will be there." Axarev walked away and into the locker. Hopes stood staring at the closed door. Things were being set in motion.

The next morning, the young man was there at 0530, still in the same outfit. Hopes had had a feeling that would happen, had already gotten sweats from the quartermaster. He handed the package to Axarev. "You may want to put these on instead of the clothes you have. It allows for easier movement." The young man took the package, didn't say a word. "The room there is the men's dressing room. You go right in, change into these. You can leave your clothes behind, that's what everybody does." Five minutes later, the young Vulcan came back in clothing appropriate for exercise.

xx

It had been a week now, and Axarev had pretty much become an honorary MACO. It just had been too easy and convenient to extend training sessions to weapons training, combat training, defense training, rescue training. He was in prime physical shape, a quick learner, and provided the more experienced men a difficult and worthy adversary. Hopes had picked him up as a sparring partner, curious to see how much progress Axarev had made. _Man, the kid was good_ , he thought as he picked himself off the floor. He had thought he had the upper hand and was going in for an easy lock. He circled again, keeping his center of gravity low, getting his breath back. All of a sudden, he knew how he was going to get the boy.

xx

Try as he might, Hopes could not see Axarev. He hoped the young man had not gotten terminally pissed when he lost to him the day before, so pissed that he would give up training with them. But there was no Axarev. After waiting with his neck craned towards the door, he gave up on the young Vulcan and looked over his team, assembled in the gym. He noted the very short buzzcut of one of the men sitting down and partly hidden by the others. Someone had let the hairdresser go crazy. He chuckled to himself.

The man got up to talk to McKenzie and Hopes eyes pretty much flew out of his head when he saw the pointed ears. _Oh shit_! Archer was going to flip a gasket. Maybe the matriarch would personally come after him. Hopes' stomach dropped before he reasoned to himself that the kid was old enough to get any haircut he damn well pleased, and that hair grew back anyway. He couldn't quite quell the guilty voice that insisted this would never have happened if he had not used Axarev's long hair to get him into a lock the day before.

x x x

TBC


	7. Suspicions

Reed didn't like it one bit. Not one bit. First, he had knocked on Hoshi's door for a late night walk around the ship and found her unavailable, in the middle of a fashion show with one of the Vulcan kids. The next day she had gushed non-stop about her new friend and, Hoshi being the social core of the ship, he had learned that Travis also had been befriended by one of the Vulcan kids. From there, the Chief of Security had discreetly and patiently investigated, and had uncovered that a dozen young Vulcans had infiltrated the core departments of the ship. And he didn't like that one bit. The matriarch may think she had all of them fooled but he was a former Section 31 operative and he knew about infiltration. He mentally checked his findings as he walked.

There was a kid from the Clan in the kitchens, ready to poison them. A kid in communications, to listen in to ship exchanges. A kid friendly in with the helmsman, to misdirect them. One in Engineering, to sabotage the ship. A couple in science, better to spy on them. There were even kids in the MACOs, better to attack them. Good thing Archer didn't like Vulcans, or they would have one for a First Off... Scratch that… ok, perhaps he was insane, but paranoia could still be a useful state of mind.

xx

Reed scoffed when he saw the young Vulcan female outside the armory, obviously waiting for him. Did the matriarch really think he was that naïve that she could throw one of the Clan members at him and he would not suspect anything? Or that he would be fooled because it was a girl when he knew women often made the best operatives? She had sent some Nikita down to spy on him. Well, two could play at that game. He was going to act the part and find out exactly what it was she was planning.

The young female followed him into the Armory. Reed stopped in the middle of the room and looked at her. "What do you want?" he sneered. Aware this may not have been the smoothest opening ever. But the young Nikita didn't seem at all enervated by his attitude. "Our matriarch wants me to learn about weapons and about what a weapons master does on a starship" she simply said. Reed was taken aback. He certainly had not expected the candor. "Why you?" he finally asked, then half in the form of an answer "What did you do on the planet?"

"I was a hunter."

Reed sneered again. "Every other Clan member was a hunter."

"Not everyone hunted equally," the girl replied. "I hunted the _oipnowe_."

"The what?"

"The _oipnowe_." The UT stubbornly refused to translate, frustrating both Malcolm and his interlocutor. She moved her hands in the air in a fluttering motion.

"Birds?" asked Malcolm. He walked over to his desk and grabbed his padd. Calling pictures of birds, he handed her the padd. But she handed it back with a shake of her head. Not birds, then. Then what? The fluttering motion she had made reminded Malcolm of flying birds. He called vid-shots of flocks of birds in motion and showed her the padd again. This time the girl nodded, "Yes, that is how the _oipnowe_ flies. But birds look nice and the _oipnowe_ are not pleasant to look at. And they kill."

Hmm. Killer flying insects or animals. That was getting interesting. "What did you hunt them with?" asked Malcom. Nikita – he decided that was going to be his nickname for her; since he was not going to let her be around for long, there was no need to learn her name - looked around at the armory, trying to find something that would resemble her hunting tools. Then she hazarded "Stones?" Reed almost felt like laughing. Stones indeed. Brilliant. No wonder the matriarch would want to find out about weapons that were a little bit more… handy.

He shook his head. "That must not have been easy. I can show you some better weapons, but only in a simulated environment." Faced with her visible incomprehension, he added "They would be make believe, but you'd get a sense of how they work in real life." Nikita nodded. Reed figured he could let her try a vid-simul training game at Level 1, but she'd be way over her head. On the other hand, what better way to shake her off than to show her how much out of her league she was "Ok, we'll use virtual phase pistols," Malcolm said as he loaded the vid-simul"

"Phase pistols?"

"Yes" Reed grabbed a couple of phase pistols from the array. "First, let me show you how the real things work so you know what you're doing in the simulation. But you won't get to use one, just the virtual version." She could look, but she couldn't touch.

xx

Reed was impressed. Nine out of ten. And without having ever held a phase pistol. She certainly knew how to shoot. "Let's try the next level," he told her, already preparing his own virtual weapon. She scored just as high on the next level, coming to within one shot of his score. Now Reed wanted to see how far she could go. He launched the next level before Nikita could agree. By the end of Level 6, she was still holding her own and Malcolm was getting tired. "That was pretty good" Reed told Nikita, caught himself "That was really good, actually. How did you say you hunted the _oipopoi_?"

"The _oipnowe_ " 'Nikita' corrected. "I used stones. I was trying to find a way to launch several stones together and have them fragment so that I could get more _oipnowe_ with a single pass." She looked at the phase pistol. "This would only shoot one _oipnowe_ at a time. What other weapons do you have?"

Reed's eyes went wide. Yield. She had been looking for yield. She knew about weapons. That's why the matriarch had sent her. If stones was what she had been using, his arsenal would be sure to blow her mind. He morally felt he didn't have a choice but to take her through every last piece of ordnance, explaining the torpedoes, the phase cannons and all the weapons at his fingertips. Just for information. "But this is really to defend or attack against other starships" he remarked, as they stood looking at the slick blackness of a torpedo casing.

"They're all _oipnowe_." 'Nikita' commented.

Reed thought for a moment, then realized how right she was. Big or small, killer or not, it was all _oipnowe_. The question always came back to how many could you get with a single pass.

xx

He just couldn't believe it. He had told 'Nikita' to come back the next day. Actually, what he couldn't believe was his bout of paranoia about the Clan's kids. He had realized from his interaction with 'Nikita' that these were just kids. They may be brighter and stronger and whatever else-er Vulcans were, but they still were seventeen year olds who had been deprived of advanced technology since they were twelve and who were barely catching up on missed time. The matriarch had sent the kids out to learn. There was just no way they were sophisticated enough to take over the ship. Not in the next couple of weeks, at least.

It was the first time he had met someone who liked weapons quite as much as he did, not for aesthetics but for the power they provided to get more _oipnowe_. And by extension be safe. He wondered how she felt about explosives…. He was pretty sure that once she realized how many _oipnowe_ one could get with them, she'd be sold.

He had to remember to ask her name.

x x x

Archer observed the command center from the door, taking in the two Vulcan seventeen year olds who were bookending T'Pol, a girl and a boy. They were engrossed in one of the science screens, alternatively talking and nodding. He looked appraisingly at the boy, tall, lanky, with auburn hair and dark eyes. Like an elongated version of Kov, the young engineer who wouldn't call his dad. He had heard from Hoshi and most of the other scientists on board about the superlatively intelligent young man who seemed to have already caught up on five years of education and was now working directly with the most reputed scientist aboard, the Science Officer herself. During one of their meals, she had debriefed him and Trip on the fact that the young man was in all probability a genius. At least, that one he wouldn't expect trouble from. The scene was one of comfortable routine and Archer checked it off in his mind as not overly troubling and proceeded down to Engineering.

Alerted by Reed that the Clan had spread its members across all the vital functions of the ship, Archer had decided to see for himself and check whether this required some intervention, in spite of Reed's reassurances that the Clan members didn't present any risk. Reed thought the Clan was just trying to learn first-hand the functions of the ship, stuff that would be useful and needed even outside of space. Archer was not willing to give the matriarch the benefit of the doubt and he was more than prepared to find some reprehensible intention behind her obvious scheme of having the Clan members' mingle with the crew.

In the kitchens, he had found Chef showing his Vulcan helper the chemistry behind the art of baking. He had had no inkling that his meals were partly prepared by one of the Clan and found the thought disconcerting. The command center was the second stop on his recognizance tour, where he had just seen the two young Vulcans working with T'Pol. That made it three Clan members. He had been told by Malcolm about Hoshi's and Travis's young friends. That made it five. And the one in the Armory with Reed made it six. Reed had been adamant that he preferred to keep his guest close by, where he knew exactly what she was up to.

When he got to Engineering, Archer asked Trip were the Vulcan was. He was still feeling pretty calm about the whole thing until Trip asked "Which one?" His smile dropped by half "You know, the one that comes after classes." Trip rolled his tongue in his cheek "I know very well what you mean, but there are two kids who help after classes." That was when Archer's smile turned into a frown. A quick tour of Engineering and discrete inspection of the kids reassured him that they were on the younger and smaller side. Hopefully not as much of a threat. That made it eight kids. He walked to hydroponics and found a young helper side by side with Ensign Trudeau, growing tomatoes on the stalk. Nine. So far, Reed's information had checked out. The gym was Archer's last stop. He looked around for Axarev's long hair but the guard must have skipped training that day. There was a younger kid running laps with the MACOs. Archer recognized Sikyd, the one who had almost started a brawl. That was ten. As he was turning to leave, a group of four MACOs ran by his corner and he realized one of them was Vulcan. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. That was Axarev! Archer looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, and though he would never have acknowledged it, check that the matriarch was not bearing down on him at that exact instant, demanding his head. That was before he reasoned that Axarev's haircut was obviously not recent and that he had yet to get a visit from the matriarch to the bridge.

That made it eleven. Reed had been right. Eleven Vulcans who had somehow become an integral part of the workings of the ship. Out of forty-seven on board. Take out the four kids in T'Pol's quarters, Severn, T'sdith and the other guard, that made it eleven out of forty potential enemy. Take out the twelve kids who were not even teenagers yet and really posed no threat and that was eleven out of twenty-eight. Almost half. Half of the adult Clan was posted throughout his ship.

Archer didn't like that one bit. What was the matriarch intending exactly?

xx

T'Pol as usual came up with the question that nobody had thought to ask. "Perhaps we can ask her."

Trip was nodding vigorously. "Yes, asking them may be the best option. After all, they've already spent three weeks on Enterprise.

Archer and Reed stared at her for a few seconds. Then Archer looked at Reed, half-questioning. Reed was nodding "Actually, that's not a bad idea. When Nikita, sorry T'smir," he noted T'Pol's raised eyebrow, sign that an explanation might be required later on "first approached me she was very open that the matriarch had asked her to learn about weapons." Hastily, Reed added, feeling the sharp glare of Archer's eyes "Of course, I have only been showing her non-classified stuff. Nothing she wouldn't eventually find on a database."

Archer looked at Trip "What do you think?"

Trip shrugged. He thought both Archer and Reed were being paranoid. It wasn't two kids with a couple of wrenches that would be able to run the engine, no matter how bright or quick learning they were. There was a reason why engineering required years of theoretical and practical learning after college. "I don't think the kids are doing anything other than avoid being bored." He turned to Archer "You were the one who was complaining that they were running rampant on the ship."

That mollified Archer. "I guess there's no harm letting it go and seeing what happens. It's not like any of them could take control of the ship. Reed, remind everyone to be careful in what they share and be on the lookout for anything suspicious."

xx

When he was warned by Reed later that day, Chef burst out laughing. As if learning how to reduce a sauce posed a threat to Enterprise. He chuckled as he went back to the pantry. That was probably the first time someone had looked at the kitchen as a strategic post. And Reed's warnings about poisoning. The Chief of Security was reading too many spy novels. Or old military books. Gone were the days of communal pots which fed every one. The crew of the Enterprise was being treated to a fine dining experience day after day, whether they were aware of it or not. Still, he would keep an eye on the spices, the only thing that went in pretty much everyone's meal. There was no reason not to be cautious. He chuckled at his own foolishness, imagining the Vulcan teen carting pounds of chemicals into the kitchen unnoticed. Where would he even find the chemicals. He shook his head. Reed was being paranoid.

xx

"Really, Malcolm, really?" Hoshi was glaring at the man she loved, hands on her hips. She was crazy about Malcolm but sometimes he was just too much. He and his stupid Section 31, ready to see espionage in the most banal circumstances. "I guess if I'm not careful, she could talk the crew to death, after all I'm teaching her about languages." She added. The Brit was not the only one with a sense of sarcasm. "Or she could put up a fashion show _a la_ Orions, we know some males on board are sensitive to that." That was a dig, and he knew it. Reed brought up his hands to sway her attack. "Ok, ok, forget I mentioned anything. I'd just thought you'd want to have the full picture." He gingerly stepped out of her cabin. Sometimes there was no talking sense into Hoshi.

xx

"Fifteen degrees out, bank to the left, and come in feet first." Xifmer announced, before launching himself into the G stream. For a second, it seemed like he had miscalculated and was going to crash to the floor, but his feet found the stream and he came shooting back to where Travis was sitting. Travis released the breath he had been holding. The last thing he wanted to do was explain to the Captain why one of the Vulcan kids had broken his leg doing acrobatics in the sweet spot.

"You cut it very close." He told his young friend. They sat together in companionable silence. Travis decided this was as good a time as any to ask "Did your matriarch tell you to become friendly with me?" he said.

Xifmer looked at him in a very Vulcan way "The matriarch told me to establish contact with you." He acknowledged.

Travis couldn't help feeling a little hurt. He also couldn't see himself saying 'but I thought you were my friend'. That would have been whining fit for a twelve year old. "Why? What were you trying to get from me?" he pursued, mindful of what Reed had told him.

Xifmer squared his shoulders where he was sitting. "When we were shown the ship, I was very interested in the sweet spot. I came back to look at it several times when everyone else was occupied. Once, I saw you get in but you didn't come back out. The next time, I tried it myself. The matriarch thought that perhaps there is something in you being the ship's pilot that makes you like the sweet spot. She thought it might give me insights in what makes a good ship's pilot."

"And?" Travis was a little bit flattered at having the matriarch call him a good pilot.

"You taught me about boomers." Xifmer replied.

"What about piloting?" Travis was hoping that at least he had taught the kid something about piloting.

"What I learned from you is that piloting a ship is like guiding your own body."

Travis was surprised. He had never thought about piloting like that. But it was true that he piloted instinctively, as if the ship was an extension of his own body. The kid had picked up on that. That would explain all the wild acrobatics. It looked like acrobatics but in fact Xifmer was learning to fly a ship…

"I came for the matriarch, but I stayed for myself." Xifmer added matter-of-factly. "I find the exercise in the G stream to be pleasantly stimulating. And you are the first human I have had conversations with." Travis smiled.

"And you do this weird thing with your mouth." Xifmer went on.

"What weird thing?"

"Like you're doing now."

"You mean, smiling?" Travis was so amused his smile grew.

Xifmer leaned forward, examining Travi's face closely, looking at his jaw line while Travis was grinning absurdly. "That looks uncomfortable." Xifmer finally stated.

What was uncomfortable was that he was smiling so hard his cheeks were hurting, thought Travis. "It's not" Travis reassured him. "You don't smile? I mean Vulcans can't smile? He added.

"I don't think our muscles are meant to contort our mouths like that," Xifmer answered. "You have no idea how strange it looks." He added. "Like you were preparing to regurgitate." At that, Travis had to laugh out loud, under the somewhat reprobating glare of a fifteen year old Vulcan. He had a feeling he was going to be hearing about the weirdness of human laughter next.

xx

Reed stood at the door to the gym, looking in. He took note of the dozen burly MACOs throwing weights around like feather pillows and the two slim young Vulcans in their midst, doing their own form of adapted conditioning. All of a sudden the absurdity of putting the MACOs on guard against the strangers in their midst struck him full force. Not that his words of caution had been that well received by the others, anyway. He turned around, letting the doors close in his back.

x x x


	8. The Departure

_First, I would like to thank everyone who did for taking the time to review and providing feedback and encouragement. The structure of the story was already in place before I started writing but you have given me a few other ideas that I'd be interested in developing further. I am thinking about ways to do so._

 _Second. I'm not very familiar with how stories are rated but I call the next and final chapter the TnT chapter. It will be posted at the same time as the Epilogue, so those who have an issue with that can go straight to the Epilogue. The story was structured to work either way. Actually, I initially was thinking of offering readers the choice of two epilogues, but one was so sad that I go depressed reading it and decided to nix it._

 _Third and last, some of the characters in this story were borrowed from Paramount and will be returned without fail._

"We're getting a communication from Vulcan" Hoshi said. She listened into her headphones and added "Addressed to T'Pol and T'sdith."

Archer looked over at T'Pol. "The response from the Vulcan High Council?" he asked.

T'Pol raised an eyebrow. "Possibly, though I do not understand why the communication was not addressed to T'sdith only."

"It seems T'Pau wants to make sure the message is not misunderstood," Archer offered. He didn't trust T'sdith one bit, and they still had not cleared the small matters of the infiltration by the Vulcan kids. In the meantime, of course, he was dying to know what the missive contained, as did everyone on the bridge.

xx

"The Council has granted the Clan's request" T'Pol informed Archer when she came back from T'sdith quarters. Archer was shocked. He had never expected Vulcan would yield on this. To be fair, he had never accepted the Vulcan of V'Las would yield, but obviously T'Pau's government was a different sort. Part of him wished he had better recognized the leadership qualities inherent in T'Pau during their brief meeting in the Forge. But his mind had been fogged by the presence of Surak's katra and T'Pau could only come up lacking when compared to Surak, especially when she was only slightly older than T'sdith at the time. At least in Vulcan years.

Archer blew out his breath softly. What did that mean in terms of the Clan? What would happen to them now? "Does the Clan know?" he asked.

T'Pol nodded. "They do by now." She paused, hesitating. "Captain, T'sdith has also requested a conference with you and your senior officers."

Archer smirked. That young brat had all the nerve. "Now did she?" he sarcastically threw back at T'Pol.

"Captain, if I may." T'Pol paused briefly, gauging Archer's mood, "it would be appropriate to treat T'sdith as an ambassador, the representative of her Clan, which is now an official Vulcan Clan."

Archer almost choked, felt himself turning red. He glared at T'Pol, who simply stood there, looking at him without blinking. Then she raised an eyebrow. Archer let out a small, sharp laugh. How come his most trusted advisor aboard the ship was a Vulcan when he would have gladly committed the whole of them to the dust of interstellar space. Life was full of irony indeed.

xx

Archer walked into the conference room, flanked by his two senior officers, T'Pol and Commander Tucker. Malcolm was behind Archer and T'Pol, with a phase pistol on his belt. It was a specific request of T'Pol that he be visibly armed.

T'sdith was already seated at the conference table, Sisig and Axarev at the ready behind her. They too bore arms.

T'sdith launched directly into the heart of the issue. "Vulcan has recognized the Na'gseihr Clan." She stated. "We want to talk about our destination."

"Our destination has not changed" Archer retorted. "We're rendezvousing with a Vulcan ship close to Vulcan space and transferring you to that ship."

"What if the Clan does not desire this outcome?"

Archer sighed. "We've already had that conversation. When we brought you aboard. Nothing has changed."

Archer was trying to hide his impatience with T'sdith. Gosh, how he would like to knock her on her ass. The thought came unbidden to this mind, trailed by another thought, a vague memory of having felt the same way or have the same thought before. His eyes widened. That was how he had felt about T'Pol, before he knew her. Archer thought back to their first encounter. He had been irritated beyond belief by the calm arrogance that emanated from her as she took in his volatile behavior and that of the other males in the room. At least, that was how he had interpreted her stance. And he had turned out to be wrong beyond the pales of arrogance. That brought him back to how rude he had been to T'Pol when she first stepped on Enterprise, oblivious to the fact she was a young alien suddenly thrust on a ship full of hostile or indifferent humans, and how isolated she must have felt in spite of any profession of non-emotion. She had started loosening her stance only after Archer had risked his life for her sake. Perhaps that was the one factor that had been missing in all the previous attempts by the High Command to post Vulcans on human ships. Could it be that they had reacted to a feeling of pervading vulnerability from being one against many, buttressed by the constant barrage of imperfectly understood emotions from the other crew members. He had never really had the time or inclination to analyze the whole thing.

He wouldn't make the same mistake twice. _Goddammit, Jonathan_ , Archer thought to himself, _you're_ _the adult, getting annoyed at a teenage girl_. Instead of looking at T'sdith as an insufferably spoiled brat, he started to consider how she must have felt, a fifteen-year-old girl having suddenly lost her parents, trying to keep her infant brother alive, and somehow finding it within herself to serve as the leader for the other children and turn them into a family, making decisions that would enable them to survive while always considering those might turn out to be lethal. Not very different from a starship captain, he mused.

His tone grew decidedly friendlier.

"Let's start over. We would like to know what you think is best for your clan."

"Could you ask Mr. Mayweather to attend, in his capacity as a boomer?" T'sdith replied.

Archer was floored by the question. Travis? What had the helmsman got to do with it? "Of course." Archer summoned Travis and the representatives waited wordlessly until he stepped in the room. Archer could see on his face that once he became aware of the occupants in the room the young man became worried that perhaps he had done something wrong.

"Mr. Mayweather, you have been asked to attend by T'sdith, head of the Na'gseihr clan, in your capacity as a boomer." Archer formally announced. "Please be seated."

Travis was intuitive enough to not seat on either side of the table, but instead positioned himself at the head. T'sdith nodded gravely at him.

Archer went back to his question "Now that Mr. Mayweather has joined us, could you please let us know your thoughts?"

T'sdith brought her hands together in front of her. When she spoke, power emanated from her voice. "Captain, Starfleet members, we of the Na'gseihr clan understand that we need to go to Vulcan to reacquaint ourselves with the families our parents left behind" Archer noted she did not say 'our families' "and with other dealings inherent to the disappearance of our parents on Planet Minshara 405 of Tau Ceti V. We have considered whether we would stay on Vulcan, and our clan has decided that we would not feel comfortable settling there." She looked at T'Pol. "We spent long years thinking that Vulcan had attacked us and exterminated our outpost. We are willing to consider that perhaps it was not responsible for the destruction of our colony but we are not willing to live on Vulcan." She gazed back to the room at large. "We have considered whether we would have a place within Starfleet, but the Na'gseihr Clan will not be split among various starships nor follow rules other than the Clan's." Before Archer could speak, she raised her hand, forestalling any rejoinder. "We have talked to Mr. Mayweather about his and his family experience with long-haul cargo. We have decided our path is to remain in space. Once we have resolved family affairs on Vulcan, we will acquire a freighter. We have the technical aptitude necessary to run such a ship and our members have started learning necessary skills as befits their preferences and personalities. The Na'gseihr Clan will be known as a spacefaring clan. Any member who does not wish to remain part of our Clan will return to the clan of their parents. Thus the Clan has spoken."

T'sdith stood up, along with her retinue, and floated out of the conference room, the guards following suit, leaving behind one dumbfounded boomer and a few shellshocked Starfleet officers. Archer finally got over the feeling his jaw had hit the floor. He looked over at T'Pol "When did you say the Vulcan ship was meeting us again?"

"They are scheduled to arrive in another week, Captain." she paused, then went on "Representatives of the clans of each of the children are on the S'Daarok. It could be that once the reunification takes place the Clan changes its decision."

Archer slowly shook his head. "I wouldn't bet on it."

"Captain, I'm not sure how this situation relates to casino-style -"

"It's another way of saying 'I don't think so', T'Pol" Archer interjected. He decoded the eyebrow he got in response as 'then why doesn't one simply say so?' There were times when the cultural gulf that separated Vulcans and humans seemed unbridgeable. Like with T'sdith. Except that for the first time in his adult life, Archer wondered if perhaps humans were the ones who needed to adapt.

x x x

"The S'Daarok is signaling us"

"On the screen, Hoshi"

It had been a long five weeks ferrying the kids back closer to Vulcan space for Archer and he was looking forward to handing his passengers over. True enough, things had grown a lot calmer. The troublemakers had stopped wreaking havoc on the well-ordered processes of a Starfleet starship, the teenagers that had infiltrated the ship had not turned into any type of lethally controlling force, he hardly saw any of T'sdith since their meeting, and the four children who were shadowing T'Pol's every move had grown more secure and she could sometimes be seen taking care of ship business without her retinue of sorts. The kids all knew how to eat, had learned to read and write, had grown accustomed to shoes, a regular day, the fact food would always be available. It was not all they needed to learn, but they at least got the basics under control.

That was the exact moment when T'Pol came up to him. "T'sdith requests a conference with the entire bridge crew and a group of select other crew members, Captain" T'Pol informed him.

Archer reflected that he was really looking forward to the Clan's departure.

xx

Archer stepped into the conference room with a certain dose of irritation. This was the second time he had been summoned to a conference on his own ship by the Clan matriarch. He did a double-take when he saw the crowded conference table, one half chockfull of Vulcan youth. He did another double-take when he noticed T'sdith sitting at one head of the table. Wordlessly, he went to the other one. The five officers and four other crew members that accompanied him sat down across the Vulcan youth. T'sdith got up. Archer decided to swallow his ego and grant her the floor.

"Captain," T'sdith addressed him, "The Na'gseihr Clan has decided to live in space and has selected Enterprise as the organizational model that its vessel will adopt. We have asked the Clan members here present to become acquainted with the crew members in this room so that they could benefit from their skill and experience." Finally, thought Archer, the explanation. T'sdith turned to the Starfleet side of the table "Starfleet members, our Clan members have spent time with you learning your role on Enterprise. They will use the time on Vulcan to deepen that knowledge and each will specialize in the branch you mentored them in. Our Clan members will have the positions and responsibilities on our ship that you, their mentors, have on Enterprise. We asked for this meeting so that the Clan members could properly express their gratitude before we remove to Vulcan." She sat down.

Axarev was on her left. He got up and walked over to where Hopes was sitting, and bowed to him. Hopes got up, surprised to find himself getting emotional. "Think about becoming a MACO one day" he gruffly said, worried his voice would give him away. "I shall give it proper thought" Axarev replied, and he walked out of the conference room.

One by one the Vulcan youth went and bowed to their mentors, under the astonished gaze of the captain, before leaving the room. In turn the mentors got up to salute their young charges and provide a couple of parting words. Archer overheard Chef tell S'ehsgu "Remember, when I retire, we're going to go open a small joint on the moon" and S'ehsgu's rejoinder "And make pies." Chef burst out laughing. At his side, Reed stiffened into full British reserve when T'smir approached. Just before she turned to leave, he called to her "It's all _oipnowe_." She looked back at him, nodded "Indeed." Travis was trying very hard to suppress a smile as Xifmer approached him. He lost the battle, and erupted in a huge grin. "Sorry" he said. Xifmer just coked an eyebrow at him and Travis burst out laughing. Trip was grinning like an idiot, his eyes moist. Hoshi was unabashedly wiping tears away. Soon, the Starfleet members and S'dith were the only ones left in the room. She got up, regal as ever. "The Na'gseihr Clan thanks you." And walked out.

Looking at her retreating back Archer mused how, starting with Ambassador Soval, no Vulcan he knew could graciously exit a gathering. They just had to drop it like a hot potato.

x x x

"Doctor" the tall Vulcan man on the vidscreen saluted Phlox, "I am Healer S'varis."

"Very nice, very nice." Phlox gave him a big smile. "Are you a Vulcan priest?"

"Unfortunately, I am not." S'varis went on "S'Daarok was the closest available ship, but only Surak-class starships have a priest as part of the medical team."

Phlox frowned. "But the kids - some of the kids have temporary bonds with one of our officers. How are we going to transfer those?"

"You're talking about the youngest orphans?" Phlox nodded. "We have foster parents from each of their clans on board. The children won't have much trouble transferring from a temporary bond to a more permanent bond." Part of Phlox felt the explanation was incomplete but he had other things that distracted his attention. "How do you propose to do the transfer?" he asked.

"We will have each couple come individually to the Enterprise. They can meet the child, establish a connection and set-up a foster bond. Then they'll come back with the child."

Phlox nodded. That seemed straightforward enough. His feeling something was incomplete finally figured out why. "What about the Vulcan with whom they had a temporary bond?" he needed to make sure this was safe for T'Pol.

Healer S'Varis paused for a little while. "It will be uncomfortable." he said. "Everyone reacts differently. But the effects should lessen over time." He seemed to want to say something else, stopped. "Of course, it would be easier with a Vulcan priest." he added.

Of course.

xx

It was decided that the youngest children would go first, to give them more time to adapt to yet new surroundings and new ways of doing things. The four couples came aboard together, ready to spend as much time as needed with their respective foster child.

T'Pol brought Swetr by himself to the observatory deck, where a surprisingly plump woman with salt and pepper hair and her consort were waiting. The adults talked together and after a while Swetr skirted over to the motherly matron in the same manner as he had first approached T'Pol. The woman inclined her head towards him in response and offered her fingers to play with. He circled her wrist with his fingers in a gesture very similar to the one he used when he first saw T'Pol. When they left at the end of the afternoon, the child seemed as if he had always been part of the family unit. In the transporter room, the couple bowed deeply to T'Pol before taking their place on the dais. T'Pol knelt in front of the boy and he knelt in response, crossing his hands palm outwards to give her a close family embrace. She raised an eyebrow in response and he walked over to the transporter dais, where his new foster parents were waiting. As the transporter took effect, he gave her the ta'al.

The transfer of Iotssif and S'ofer went along roughly the same lines, the children hungry for a full connection and quickly bonding with their new foster parents, easily moving from the safety of the temporary bond to its permanent replacement, the foster parents expressing their gratitude to T'Pol, and close embraces at the end.

T'Ilkwe was the last one to leave. The girl's foster mother had bright blue eyes like T'Pol's mother and looked like the picture of kindness, her husband a gentle giant at her side. T'Ilkwe quickly established a bond with them. But when the time came to go back to the transporter dais, the girl hung on to T'Pol's leg, unwilling to let go. T'Pol crouched down to talk to her in soft tones. The foster mother did the same, and the child suddenly threw herself at the other woman's neck who picked her up easily, still talking to her, until T'Ilkwe released her grip. The father came over and gently touched the child's cheek with two fingers. Finally T'Ilkwe asked to be set down, walked over to give T'Pol a family embrace, and left with her new foster parents.

xx

In the end, only Severn was left, other than T'sdith and her guards. T'sdith had held on to him throughout the day's departures, and Phlox was starting to wonder with some trepidation if she was going to be able to let go. Finally, he managed to convince her to have Severn come to Sickbay so that S'Varis, who had transported over from the S'Daarok specifically for that reason, could more accurately assess the child's condition. Sisig brought the child. After meeting with Severn and exchanging a few words with him, S'Varis walked over to Phlox, his face closed, and the two doctors disappeared into one of the private sickbay offices.

"Well?" asked Phlox.

S'Varis looked uncomfortable "The child is showing clear signs of failure to thrive" he replied "His physical development has obviously been affected and I am unable to assess his intellectual development but it does not look promising. He needs to be fostered by a couple or he will never reach his full potential. A priest will be required to transfer the parental bond from T'sdith to them but it would be beneficial if the new parents could establish a temporary bond starting today."

Phlox sighed. It was all in the hands of T'sdith. The bond with the foster parents could only happen with her approval. She had not come to Sickbay with Severn and she was not responding to attempts to reach her. The foster parents were already aboard, waiting to meet Severn. He conferred with T'Pol and they decided to let them get acquainted with Severn in the neutral environment of Sickbay while T'Pol set to unobtrusively scouting the ship for his sister.

Severn's foster mother spontaneously picked him up as soon as she saw him, a rare departure from tradition, and sat with him on a biobed under the approving gaze of Phlox and the carefully impassive one of S'Varis. Her husband joined her and they sat silently with the child while an hour, then two, went by. Phlox was always amazed at the capacity of Vulcans to just be, though he suspected there was an intense and lively communication being exchanged between the couple, in a form he would never be able to fully comprehend. Finally, the doors opened and T'sdith stepped in, T'Pol right behind her. Phlox looked enquiringly at T'Pol and got from the eyebrow she cocked at him in reply that getting T'sdith to Sickbay had been an arduous process. T'sdith stopped in the middle of the room, looking at her brother and the woman holding him. She seemed about to lose her composure and Phlox suddenly saw how desperately young she was, alone in a room full of adults who were proposing to take her brother away.

He quickly interjected before she could embarrass herself "Ah! Very good." Turning to the foster parents, Phlox went on "This is T'sdith, matriarch of the Na'gseihr Clan, sister of Severn, and the only reason you are able to hold him today. Without her, he would not be here. And as matriarch of the Clan, she is allowing him to be fostered only because it is in Severn's best interest as a Clan member."

T'sdith looked like a deer caught in the headlights, eyes wide as saucers as she tried to process what Phlox had said. They both knew there was no other choice. For Severn to grow up normally, he needed a full bond with two parents. Before she could figure out an objection, the couple had gotten up from the biobed, the woman still carrying Severn, and came over to T'sdith. They spoke for a long time, sometimes nodding, until eventually a new resolve came over T'sdith's face. She looked at Severn silently for a few minutes, drinking in his features, then took his hand and placed it on the foster mother's face, allowing the bond.

It was T'sdith the matriarch who walked Severn and his new foster parents all the way to the transporter pad, Healer S'Varis trailing behind. It was T'sdith the matriarch who gave the parental touch to her young brother where he was being safely held in his foster mother's embrace. Severn looked up at T'sdith, reached out with his hand, and gently traced the contour of her cheekbone, seeming to be soothing her. It was T'sdith his sister who looked with agonized eyes as he shimmered out of sight.

xx

As he toured the decks where the children had stayed, now noisy with the removal of extra bunk beds and restoring of wall panels, Archer fought a sense of sadness. He considered the tally of the past five weeks. T'sdith had driven him and Reed crazy, his Science Officer looked like she was going to drop any day from the exhaustion of being father, mother, teacher, and everything in between to four orphans, and Tucker's crew had spent half their time repairing equipment laid waste by the Clan members. He certainly hadn't expected he was going to miss them. And he was not the only one; the MACOs had lost two valued trainees, Chef would be alone to julienne his dishes, Hoshi and Travis would miss their friends, and Tucker was a couple of hands short. It came to him that if the Na'gsheir Clan could have that kind of impact in the short span of five weeks, they would be a force to be reckoned with once T'sdith accomplished their goal of getting their own freighter.

x x x

Once the last transfer had taken place, Phlox turned to T'Pol "I want to see you in Sickbay."

"I would prefer going to my quarters, Doctor. To rest."

"Fine, but make sure you do so. I am putting you on medical leave for the next two days." Phlox watched T'Pol until she had made the turn towards her quarters. He knew that Trip would keep an eye on her and make sure she was ok, or he would have hauled her to Sickbay in spite of her protestations.

xx

Trip walked into their quarters, stopped at the sight of T'Pol's meditating. Boy, he had missed that sight, missed her. She opened her eyes as he came near. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt" Trip said.

T'Pol rose from where she had been kneeling. "I was almost done anyway."

Trip took in the dark circles under her eyes "How are you doing?"

For once, T'Pol didn't simply reply 'fine'. She mulled his question over "I'm not sure" she finally ventured.

Trip stepped behind her, started massaging her shoulders. "How about we get something to eat and you can tell me everything I've missed about the fosters. In exchange, I'll tell you about V'Ettelk and T'Leff, some of the best apprentices I've ever had."

x x x


	9. The Severing

xx

Trip awoke when he felt T'Pol leave their bed. She had been sleeping for 24 hours straight, and he half-expected she would still be sleeping when he left for his shift. He checked the time sensor - another two hours left before. The unmistakable sound of retching coming from the bathroom made him get up on an elbow. He couldn't feel anything amiss through the bond, T'Pol was not sick or in pain. He waited until she came out, asked as she got back into bed "You're ok?"

"I'm fine."

"What's wrong?"

"I am not sure. I expect this must be a normal part of the separation process."

T'Pol had warned him that as light as the temporary bond was with each of the children, its severing when they left the Enterprise would be psionically painful. Their hope that a Vulcan priest would be there to handle the transition had not panned out. She would just have to deal with the pain. And the bone-deep fatigue of having been bonded to four young orphans at once, without any training. She went back to sleep and Trip finally dozed off, determined to keep an eye on things.

xx

As soon as his shift was over, Trip went to their quarters. He walked in and was immediately reassured when he didn't see T'Pol sleeping in their bed. She must be feeling better if she was up and about.

That feeling died as soon as he heard the sounds coming from the bathroom. Was she vomiting again? He waited worriedly for her to come out, and after a few minutes of fretting called out "T'Pol, I'm coming in." There was no answer. Trip rushed in and found her lying in a fetal position on the floor. "What's going on?!" he tried to help her get up, but she was too weak and sank back down. He picked her up and headed straight for Sickbay.

Phlox came out when he heard the doors open. "Hmm, I had a bad feeling about this." He guided Trip to a biobed, grabbed his mediscanner. "What's going on?"

"I picked her up off the bathroom floor, I think she's been throwing up all day."

"Hmmm" Phlox eyed his scanner, "her blood pressure is very low." He quickly inserted an IV line, then another one "That one is for electrolytes" he replied to Trip's unspoken question.

"Will she be ok?"

"She'll be fine. It's going to take a few days." Phlox explained. "Vulcan physiology is extensively connected to their telepathic abilities. She's suffering from the shock of having the bonds with the children severed. It was a shallow bond and the healer on the Vulcan ship said the effect would eventually wear off." He smiled at Trip "In a way it is as if her system had adapted to handling five organisms, and now that there is only one left it is overcompensating and throwing everything off kilter. Actually, it may help if you held her hand as often as you can. It would give her body a reference point in terms of temperature for her biological controls."

Phlox grinned broadly. Trip wondered if he was just saying that for his sake or if it was true. It didn't really matter, he would station himself by her side in any case. T'Pol laid prostrate on her side, the side drawer had been extended in case she got sick again. Trip picked up her hand where it was laying on top of the medisheet. "Hey, how ya doing?" he gently said, "Phlox said it may take a few days of you feeling sick to your stomach. I'll be around as much as I can." He interlaced her fingers with his and sat himself down next to her biobed. Phlox came around and pulled the curtains around them for privacy.

x x x

"Phlox to Captain Archer."

"Archer here."

"Could you come down to Sickbay, please?" Archer looked at the door to his ready room, frowning. It was unusual for Phlox to summon him. What the hell was going on? He stepped into Sickbay a few minutes later, seeing that T'Pol was in the same prostrate position as when he had come by the day before, huddled on her side, eyes closed except she was looking deathly pale. And gaunt. The change in the span of twenty-four hours was shocking. He looked at Phlox in confusion.

Phlox was grim. "We need to find a Vulcan priest. There must be a Surak-class starship around that can meet with us soon."

"But I thought you said she would be fine." Archer's eyes didn't leave T'Pol's form, while his mind was working at full speed.

"I thought so, but she is getting worse and I don't know what's going on. The healer on board the S'Daarok mentioned it would have been easier if there had been a Vulcan priest to help with the transfer. I need to talk to him to find out more but in any case we need to find a Vulcan priest."

Archer stepped to the wall, hit the intercom. "Hoshi, contact Vulcan, find out where the nearest starship with a Vulcan priest is, and request an intercept. Also, see if you can raise the S'Daarok, we need ship-to-ship communication between their healer and Dr. Phlox."

"Aye, sir." By the time Archer stepped back onto the bridge Hoshi had an answer. "I made contact with Vulcan, Captain. The T'Herkat is five days away at warp seven. They are diverting to meet with us."

"Travis, lay in a course to get us as close to them as we can. Tucker, we'll need all she's got." Archer's mouth was set in a thin line. This felt like _déjà_ vu all over again.

x x x

Healer S'Varis materialized on the vid-screen. Phlox dispensed with niceties. "I am calling about Commander T'Pol. She is not well."

S'Varis inclined his head to the side. "What are the symptoms?"

"Endocrine storm, levels are completely off normal. Patient is throwing up every couple of hours. Also lethargic and prostrate. "

"Are hormone levels normal?"

"As normal as I can manage to keep them, but otherwise they're all over the place." S'Varis nodded "I think it may be _Aruu'shaar_ Syndrome. It is a complication that can happen when a bond is severed, though it is fairly rare. In a normal evolution, the physical manifestation would ease over a number of days. In the syndrome a feedback loop gets created and the symptoms worsen exponentially. The only known remedy is to interrupt the loop before the point of non-return."

"Please explain point of non-return."

S'Varis eyes widened, then he seemed to realize that of course Phlox would not know. " _Aruu'shaar_ Syndrome is deadly. Can you send me her medical charts?"

"How common is _Aruu'shaar_ Syndrome?" Phlox asked, his voice tight. What he really wanted to do was scream at S'Varis _'What do you mean deadly?! And how come you neglected to mention this before_? _!_ '

"It is very rare." the healer replied. "Actually I am surprised it would happen at all. She only had a temporary bond with the child."

"Children," Phlox corrected.

S'Varis blinked "Children?"

Phlox looked at the doctor with stupefaction, which turned to consternation as he realized there may have been a huge gap in their communication. "Four children" he articulated for S'Varis' edification. "The four youngest orphans."

S'Varis eyes opened wide. "She bonded with all of them?!"

Phlox had the sinking feeling this was not good news. He grasped for some practical scientific ground to anchor himself. "The odds for complication increase with the number of bonds?" he asked.

"The number of bonds, the intensity of the bond, the age of the participant..." S'Varis started what seemed to be a long list of qualifiers, stopped himself. "It was illogical to bond with four children at one time."

Phlox felt his temper rise. "And which of the children should she have refused, hmm?"

S'Varis was looking over the chart that Phlox had just forwarded "I beg forgiveness, I didn't realize she was the only Vulcan aboard. She has never been with child, has she?" Phlox shook his head "No". "She is very young…" the healer was thinking out loud "…on a human starship, there was nobody to provide guidance…" Phlox briefly reflected that if there had been someone able to provide guidance that same someone would have been able to bond with the orphans and there would have been no issue. S'Varis kept going through the medical charts. Suddenly his head whipped up. "What is the level of the _OmMu3_ enzyme?"

"The _OmMu3"_ enzyme?"

"It is an enzyme that only gets generated in cases of acute psionic stress. Your medical diagnostic database should already be programmed to test for it, as a result of the interspecies medical exchange. You have to make sure it does not go up above 200."

"What level am I looking for?"

"It can be zero, but if it is present, you want a value around 150 or so. It if gets up above 175, it is cause for concern. If the level reaches 195 and above, it will be almost impossible to reverse the syndrome."

"What can we do to lower the value?"

"The enzyme is a by-product of psionic stress. Removing the stress is the only way to lower the value." S'Varis eyes were hooded. "Once the syndrome has been triggered, a Vulcan priest is necessary. In rare cases, patients have spontaneously recovered, but these are extremely rare and end up in medical journals. I apologize for not being able to provide more help, Doctor."

"On the contrary, you were very helpful, Healer." Phlox signed off, called out to sickbay "Ensign Cutler, get me a level on the _OmMu3_ enzyme! Now!"

The computer was taking forever to spit out the test results. Finally, a beep sounded. "What's the reading?" Ensign Cutler asked, trying to peek over Phlox's shoulder. "176." Phlox frowned. It would be another four days before they met up with the T'Herkat and the Vulcan priest. A very long four days.

x x x

"Captain, a ship just dropped out of warp. " Hoshi leaned closer into her headpiece. "Vulcan. Sir, they're hailing us. Requesting permission to dock." They were still over a day from the rendezvous point. "Any further information?" asked Archer. Hoshi listened in again "They have a priest on board."

"Permission granted. Trip, come with me. Hoshi, tell Dr. Phlox to get ready." Archer and Tucker rapidly made their way to the airlock. Phlox huffed his way over a couple of minutes later. Once the shuttle had docked, Archer motioned for Trip to open the airlock. A hooded figure stepped on board, gave the ta'al. "Live long and prosper, Captain. I am Priest Dahal of Vulcan. I came to serve."

"Welcome aboard. We were not expecting to intercept your ship for at least another day."

"Minister T'Pau requested our prompt arrival." The priest answered. "A shuttle can fit where a full-class starship cannot and our pilot knows of shorter routes through the _Daa'x'tur_ asteroid field." Archer was impressed. The Vulcan maps didn't list the asteroid field but crossing one was never for the faint of heart. He stepped aside to introduce the doctor, who was standing behind him. "This is Dr. Phlox, our medical officer. He will fill you in."

xx

"She established a temporary parental bond with four children?" Dahal could not keep the surprise out of his voice.

Phlox hoped he would not start hearing about it being illogical "They were orphans. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one." Dahal would definitely be able to understand that.

Dahal looked deep in thought "Repairing the severing of a single bond can be achieved fairly easily with usually positive results. There is scant literature on repairing the severing of multiple bonds at once." Phlox understood it to mean that Dahal had never done it, chose to ignore the possibility it had never been successfully done.

The Vulcan priest stepped over to T'Pol, said something in Vulcan to her. She stirred, then nodded, eyes still closed. He bent to briefly touch the psionic points on her face, straightened up and looked at Phlox. "She is bonded?"

"Yes."

"This somewhat improves the odds. I shall require the assistance of her bondmate."

"I'll have Commander Tucker join us." Phlox paused, hesitated "You are aware he is human?"

"His telepathic abilities are of no concern." Dahal replied. "I am here to establish any necessary meld." He looked up at Phlox "Their relationship is a positive one?"

"Without any doubt" Phlox nodded. "He's been at her side every chance he gets."

In response, Dahal shed his robe, revealing a white Vulcan styled tunic and pants. "I shall prepare while we await his arrival."

xx

The priest splayed his fingers on T'Pol's face, then on Trip's face, After a couple of minutes, his eyes shot open and he took Trip's hand and laid it on T'Pol face, instructing him to maintain the connection and warning against any interruption. He then put both hands on T'Pol's face, his face a mask of utter concentration and effort, almost immobile except for the imperceptible movement of his fingers. Finally, after an hour, Dahal removed his and Trip's hands from T'Pol's face, and blinked twice.

Phlox rushed over to Trip's side "How do you feel?"

"As if I've run the marathon." Trip looked completely exhausted.

Dahal spoke "I need to rest for a while, then we will proceed with the next session."

"There'll be another session?" Trip sounded distressed.

"There will be three more" replied Dahal. "Would you prefer we proceed without you?"

"No, not at all. I'll do whatever it is I have to. It's just... this knocked me out for a loop, you know?"

Dahal nodded "This is a very arduous treatment." He turned to Phlox "I will be in a healing trance for an hour, and then resting. We need a continuous reading of the _OmMu3"_ enzyme. After an hour, if it starts rising, wake me up."

Phlox nodded. "Do you want me to take you to the guest quarters?"

"That won't be necessary" Dahal replied. "I will just use one of the biobeds." Having said this, he slowly walked to the nearest biobed, laid on it and closed his eyes in one fluid motion. Trip turned to Phlox "If you don't mind, I'll stick by also. No point having to walk back here," and he hoisted himself on the biobed behind him, falling asleep almost instantly.

xx

Hardly two hours had gone by. Phlox was standing vigil at his station, reading about Vulcan medical practices, when the sound of retching cut across sickbay. Phlox sighed. Something told him the _OmMu3_ enzyme would soon start acting out. Almost immediately, the medical alert rang.

Phlox walked over to the bed where Dahal lay resting. He was reaching out to wake him when the priest's eyes snapped open and he rose up from the biobed. He walked over to T'Pol with hardly a glance at Phlox, calling over his shoulder "It is time to wake up her bondmate." Phlox went to shake Trip awake. The man was obviously in a deep sleep and had a hard time getting his bearing. When he did, he got up right away and went to stand by T'Pol's, on the other side from Dahal.

The second session lasted longer than the first. At one point, Trip burst out in tears, long, drawing sobs which shook his frame and kept him from speaking. Then he quieted down. When the session was over, he had to be helped to his bed and collapsed on it, dead to the world. Dahal looked haggard and drawn. He seemed slightly out of balance as he walked to his biobed, calling for a two-hour reprieve. Phlox tried to counter "This may be too early. You both are exhausted."

Dahal looked at him silently for a few seconds. "You do not realize how critically ill T'Pol is." He said, then added "She would not have survived long enough for Enterprise to meet up with the T'Herkat."

xx

Phlox's first thought was that it had been a while since he had heard the sound of retching. The second thought was that he should never have had the first thought. Because at that exact instant the alert sounded. The enzyme reading was still too high, at 185. But it had been a long interval of relative calm, possibly the longest since T'Pol had been admitted to Sickbay.

Dahal had already gotten up from the biobed on which he was resting, proof that he had had time to recover. Phlox went over to Trip. Dahal stopped him with a question "Would it be preferable to let him rest? I can proceed without his assistance."

Phlox paused mid-stride, mulled over his answer, then turned back to Dahal. "Would you want your bondmate to go through this without your help?"

Dahal inclined his head in acknowledgement "You are right. Please proceed."

Trip took a long time waking up, then positioned himself next to T'Pol and Priest Dahal as if this were the most natural thing in the world and closed his eyes. He was the picture of soul-crushing, mind-numbing, bone-bleaching fatigue. Phlox thought he would soon have two patients, but at least one of them would be suffering from a pure physical ailment and not some hard to cure telepathic syndrome.

When the session was over Dahal turned to Phlox. "The enzyme level should start going down now" he slurred before plopping down on his biobed and closing his eyes to the world. Trip looked like death warmed over and teetered to his own biobed. Phlox didn't know how he could even walk.

"Doctor, the enzyme is down to 179!" Phlox almost got up from his desk to hug Ensign Cutler. Hours went by and still no alert sounded, and he found himself breathing easier, though still on tenterhooks. He was surprised to see Dahal get off his biobed and walk over to T'Pol. "The _OmMu3_ reading is not going up" he told the priest "there is no need to proceed so soon."

"We only have a short window of time to stop the escalation, Doctor. There is only one more bond that needs to be seen to, but we cannot assume that normal healing will take place" Dahal replied.

 _That, they certainly couldn't_. Phlox thought, walking to Trip's side and hesitating as he saw the ashen face of the Chief Engineer. He didn't want to sacrifice one for the other. Dahal's voice reached to him as if he had been reading his thoughts "He may be mentally and physically exhausted after this, but there won't be any permanent damage." Phlox felt like replying that exhaustion could kill humans, which was permanent enough. But the choice was not ethically his to make, he had to leave it up to Trip. He shook him awake and Trip stared at him as if he was trying to remember where he was and who Phlox was. When the fog finally lifted, he made a move to rise from the biobed but Phlox held him down. "Commander, you do not have to do this. You are already exhausted and Dahal can do it himself."

Trip pushed him away "I do have to do this."

"What is it specifically that you are doing?" Phlox asked, curious.

"I can't really say. It all comes in sounds and images." Trip replied evasively. Even if he wanted to, he could not fully describe the role that he played in the melds. And he did not want to. It would have meant sharing that the bond with T'Pol was the anchor that Dahal kept pointing her back to as he worked through the intense feelings of loss, grief and despair that accompanied each of the broken bonds and were so overwhelming that they had thrown her entire biology into a death spiral. Of course, Dahal could have done the same without him there, but it would have taken longer and it may have been less efficient. Already one of the bonds, he suspected the one with the female child, had taken twice as long to unravel, mixed up with unresolved feelings from the death of T'Pol's mother.

The last meld went on for a little over an hour. When Dahal finally released his hold on the couple, Trip knees buckled and he collapsed in a heap on the floor. Phlox and Cutler hoisted him onto a biobed where Phlox injected him with a stimulant while Cutler inserted an IV line. Dahal had put on his hooded robe back on and stood, vacillating slowly, next to T'Pol. Phlox hurried to him. "We should be done." the healer said. "Could you guide me to your guest quarters?"

"Of course." Phlox hesitated then asked "Do you want to take my arm?"

The healer held up his palm "I should be able to manage, as long as you walk with me." Together, they made their way to the guest quarters, at a snail pace. Phlox punched in the override code and stepped in behind the healer. Dahal took one lurching step towards the double bed in the center of the room then seemed to fold onto it as if a giant hand had cut the strings that kept him together. "Do not disturb me" he muttered, before turning on his side, dead to the world. Phlox nodded at the sleeping figure, walked out and locked the door.

Cutler greeted him with excitement as soon as he walked back into sickbay. "The _OmMu3"_ enzyme is still falling!"

xx

"Still 150, Doctor"

"Thank you, Ensign. You can turn the alert off now." Phlox looked over at T'Pol. While still elevated the reading hadn't changed in a few hours now and he could safely let himself believe they were out of the woods. She looked much improved, though she needed to put on a least twenty pounds. Her skin was a healthy green and she had relaxed from the fetal position in which she had been huddled. It was hard to believe it had only been a couple of days. Trip would be in sickbay for at least that long, recovering, and he had no idea when Dahal would emerge from the guest quarters.

xx

Phlox watched as Priest Dahal went to T'Pol's side, talked to her softly, and then spread his fingers on her face one more time. This time the contact was only a few minutes long. Dahal nodded in appreciation when he broke it off, and gave her the ta'al "Peace and long life, T'Pol of Vulcan." His hooded robe was back on, his features and eyes hidden from all. Phlox had come to realize the hooded robe was actually a protection for someone who was as psionically sensitive as the priest.

Dahal walked over to Phlox. "Doctor"

"Thank you," smiled Phlox, slightly overcome at the realization of the risk T'Pol had been in, the cost to Dahal, and the cost to Trip, who still laid unaware on a nearby biobed.

"No thanks are necessary. I came to serve." Dahal looked at Phlox. "My shuttle will be here shortly. Convey my gratitude to Commander Tucker."

"Of course, Priest Dahal."

The Sickbay doors swooshed open and Archer walked in with Reed. He glanced over at T'Pol, checking that she looked better, then at Trip, before turning to Dahal. "Your ship is here and your shuttle is going to be docking soon. Is there anything we can do for you?"

"Your hospitality has been most gracious, Captain, thank you for letting me use the guest quarters. It is time for me to return to my ship." They walked out of sickbay.

Phlox went over to T'Pol's biobed. She opened her eyes and looked up at him as he hovered over her "Well, well, well, I'm glad you're back with us." Phlox was all smile. He shushed her attempt at a reply. "You should be able to go back to your quarters in a couple of days. Of course, it will take a while longer before you can resume your duties. Something about regulatory weight. I'm sure you understand" he said, grinning broadly.

x x x

Trip was getting ready for his shift, careful to shield his thoughts from his bondmate eyeing him balefully from the bed. He may have to find other quarters if she caught on how much he had enjoyed her sound defeat by Phlox the day before, who steadfastly held his ground that two pounds below minimum weight could not in any way be stretched so as to satisfy the weight requirement. He almost made it safely out of their quarters but the temptation was too great. "I'll be back in a few hours" he announced, adding with a fake air of innocence "would you like me to bring you anything? Perhaps something to eat?" He quickly stepped out before he could find out if irate Vulcans threw things. Which would all be for a very logical reason, of course.

As he made his way to the bridge, his thoughts turned to how truly alien T'Pol was. He often deluded himself that she was like a human woman, except for the delicious ears. Once in a while he was reminded that she was an alien, with an alien physiology, not some human hiding in an alien costume. Her hesitancy about their relationship now made sense, her fear that he might at some point want to walk away from the relationship because it was too different, too much work, too much else, compounded by the fact that he could actually walk away because humans had the distinct advantage of being able to dissociate their emotions, of not having their entire physiological functioning high-jacked by their psionic connections. He squared his shoulders unconsciously. This was all water under the bridge. He had made a decision to maintain their bond knowing full well she was an alien and nothing had changed about that. Perhaps once in a while he was confronted with the enormity of how different the path he had chosen was, but he would much rather be by her side, however different and unfamiliar and strange and scary and exhausting and alien that was, than any other place. And that would never change.

x x x

Trip walked in to find T'Pol at her desk, a mound of data files in neat piles around her chair. It was the first day Phlox had allowed her back on light duty and the tasks of the past few weeks had obviously caught up with her as soon as she finished her shortened shift. "How's it going?" he asked as a way of greeting. She leaned back in her chair and raised an eyebrow at him, then went back to the data padd she was reading. Trip walked over and leaned over her shoulder, careful to breathe directly on the tip of an ear. She inclined her head away from him and he followed her, his intent obvious, knowing that his desire would awaken hers and start a loop where each fed the other forward. All of a sudden she grasped the back of his head and kissed him forcibly. Soon the world disappeared in a white haze of hot glory.

He came back to his senses snuggled against a hot sleeping Vulcan body. Conscious that she had not yet eaten, he gently blew on the back of her neck. A couple of minutes later, he came to the realization that exhaustion of the first day back on duty and post-coital hormone drop meant that she was not going to wake up and he snuggled next to her for the night.

She was in the shower in the morning when the intercom rang "Phlox to Commander"

Trip answered. "How ya doing, Doctor?"

"Can you tell me why Commander T'Pol neglected to eat last night?" Phlox sounded about as upset as Trip had ever heard him.

"Well, we were ah... huh..."

Fortunately, Phlox interrupted what was going to be an awkward explanation. "May I remind you that no matter what pursuits you engage in in your spare time, it is imperative that Commander T'Pol not miss a meal? You can let her know I am keeping track and I plan to do so for quite a while. Make sure she has breakfast this morning. Phlox out."

Trip decided against sharing Phlox's call with T'Pol. They went to the mess hall for breakfast together, as usual, and Trip went to get food for both of them from the dispensary. He quickly snatched the tall milkshake-like concoction marked "for T'Pol" that was held in stasis, aware that his intensely private wife would not appreciate Phlox's indiscretion, and brought it back to their table along with her usual breakfast. She stared at the milkshake then raised an eyebrow at him "How long is Dr. Phlox planning to monitor my food intake?"

"Ah... huh...he wouldn't stay" Trip started, aware of the yawning abyss opening under his feet. But T'Pol obviously had decided it would be illogical to fight the doctor on it and she proceeded with breakfast without any further comment. While they were eating, Trip saw Phlox step into the mess hall and look around until he saw him and T'Pol. Seemingly satisfied, he stepped right out before she could catch sight of him. Trip released the breath he had been unconsciously holding. He turned to T'Pol and realized as he was skewered by an eyebrow that she was well aware of everything that had transpired, damn Vulcan hearing, and that he was in the dog house. He sighed.

x x x


	10. Epilogue

T'sdith turned to T'Saris, who was thrusting a shipping manifest in her hands. "I think if we buy another freighter, we could capture 63% of the _Ulk'hajan_ shipping lanes." She reviewed the padd, looked back at T'Saris who explained further. "There are not enough freighters covering these lanes because navigation is so difficult. But Xifmer can identify better routes."

T'sdith considered. They had been very successful so far with their first freighter, which had grown to two, then three multigenerational ships. That they would be able to man another ship was not in question. The spacefaring clan's reputation had grown as they established new trading routes and acquired more freighters in the Tau Ceti V quadrant, and there were always new members looking to join them, seeking answers beyond those they could find on Vulcan. Almost all the clan members had been betrothed and as part of the negotiations their consorts had agreed to come and live on the ship with them. Within the next ten years, the first pon farrs would occur, and soon after the first births. In spite of the stipulation as part of their acceptance as a new clan that every offspring of a Clan member would have a right to choose whether to rejoin their forefathers' clans when they came of age, T'sdith was confident that the vast majority would choose to remain members of the Clan, with its emphasis on survival over tradition. The only one who had left ever was S'Odjak, the genius scientist, for there was really no other option for someone of his ilk. The Clan was small and didn't have much of a voice in internal Vulcan matters. Yet. But it had already more than doubled in size. It would keep growing until one day it was one of the more established Vulcan clans. Perhaps even in her lifetime.

She handed the padd back to T'Saris. "Proceed with sourcing another freighter." She would have to bring the matter to the Council for ratification.

She looked up at her bondmate as he entered the command room. She had never really expected she would end up being bonded to Sisig, but in the end it was the logical thing to do. They had fought together, prevailed together, he had been in on every plan she ever made for the Clan, he knew her better than anyone and she trusted him with her life. Axarev would also have been an appropriate bondmate, but he was more of a warrior and Sisig was more of a philosopher, and she needed a philosopher more than she needed a warrior. And Axarev was interested in exotic and different things. She expected that he would eventually take an alien as a bondmate before the Time came on him, possibly a human. He had been quite taken with that female on the Enterprise, Ma'kenzy was her name she believed.

Sisig approached the command chair. "The new recruits are coming on board, wife, I think it would be appropriate for you to welcome them."

"Is that an obligation? They will soon meet me as matriarch of the Clan."

"It may be part of the Captain's duties that are less palatable to you but it helps new crew members adapt to the command structure." Sisig was always so reasonable, and she cherished him for it.

"Agreed." She got up, smoothing out her tunic. "But no ceremonial robes." Sisig nodded, he knew her well. "Who do we have this time?"

"Actually, only one recruit. Young, but very established. He has an advanced degree in xeno-hydroponics, can grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables, even in the confined environment of a freighter." Sisig looked studiously at the ground "He says he's always felt a sense of kinship with you."

T'sdith nostrils flared in annoyance. Another young soul who had gotten snared by the imagined romance of deep space life. "We'll see how long he's with us," she said. "In any case, that is more helpful to us than another helmsman or another guard." Sisig winced slightly, remembering her displeasure at the latest batch of new crew members, who had quickly found themselves delegated to friendly freighters.

They came to the airlock, waited for the ground shuttle to dock and the seal to be securely fastened. Sisig took a step back from his bondmate. The door opened, and a tall, willowy male stepped in, followed by his travel trunk. He straightened up and looked at T'sdith, not saying a word. She was looking at him intently, drinking in his features. She looked over at Sisig incredulously, noting the smile in his eyes, then back at the man facing her, eyes wide with shock. She took a step towards him, reaching with her palms out "...Severn?"

He inclined his head down towards her, crossing his wrists in front of him, fingers facing out for the parental touch "Sister."

THE END

 _To my readers, thank you._


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